Christine's Tale
by Jennaria
Summary: The Opera Ghost really existed, true. But M. de Chagny's version of events leaves out certain facts.
1. In which memories are revisited

PROLOGUE

(wherein memories are revisited, and our heroine first hears of the Angel of Music)

_ The Opera Ghost really existed, true. But M. de Chagny's version of the story leaves out certain facts. Poor Raoul! He thought it began at the Gala on the night of M. Debienne and M. Poligny's retirement. For him, perhaps it did. For me, it began as a mere girl, sitting at my father's knee._

_I can barely recall my mother. She lingers in my memory as the shimmer of golden hair in the firelight, and a sweet voice singing me to sleep. My father would never talk about her, no matter how much I begged. My mother was dead and gone, rest her soul, we lived in France now, better to forget._

_And for nine months of the year, we did forget. But summertime was outside all such restrictions. We roamed the Normandy countryside like a pair of gypsies during the summer, paying our way with my voice and his violin, carefree and content. Best of all, as we walked from town to town, or when a rainy afternoon confined us to a barn with no audience, my father would tell me stories...dark legends of the far North, bold tales of the Sweden of my birth. The Angel of Music haunted them all.  
  
_  
"Daddy, who is the Angel of Music?" Christine asked suddenly. They'd been trapped in this barn for -- well, she didn't know how long, only that the skies had opened and they'd had to run for it, and her father had hardly said a word. She was tired of rainy silence. "You keep talking about Him, but you don't say who He is."

Her father looked up from rubbing a soft rag over his violin, and chuckled, his dark eyes sparkling even in the rain-dimmed light. "There is not much to say, Christine. The Angel of Music is the protector of we musicians."

"That's not right," she said stubbornly. "He didn't protect Little Lotte. She only heard Him in her dreams."

He laughed again, and set aside his violin onto a pile of hay. "But Lotte died at a very old age nevertheless, after all her adventures. Perhaps I chose the wrong word. He is more our patron than our protector."

Christine leaned forward and looked up at her father with the widest blue eyes she could manage. They had been busy the past few days, always in company with no time for stories, and she longed for one.

Her father leaned back against the rough stone wall of the barn and paused with elaborate care, drawing out her suspense. "During Creation, God laughed with joy," he said at last. "From that laughter was born the Angel of Music. He lives in a grand palace made of clouds in Heaven, from which He comes to grant what the unknowing might call genius."

He paused too long this time, and Christine had to prompt him. "To whom does he give it? Everyone?"

He shook his head and smiled at her. "Not to every man and woman, little one. Only to a great musician, or one who will be great. He stays for but a little while, before leaving again, and most often He comes but once in a lifetime. And sometimes," he added, so softly she could barely hear him, "you do not realize He has come until He has left you." He fell silent again, looking down at his hands, his face entirely hidden in shadow. The rain pattered on the roof.

Christine leaned her head against the hay, waiting for him to go on. She recognized the mood. Daddy had learned most of these stories from her mother. He said he remembered her in the telling. Sometimes he would tell her a little bit about Mama, but he didn't seem to be in that mood today -- and Christine refused to give up her story. "Daddy?" she said at last. "When does He come?"

He looked up from his hands, tear tracks on his cheeks. "Sometimes He comes to their cradle, as with Lotte," he said, voice gruff, "which is why young children like you can sometimes play better than old men like me."

"You're not old!"

"Fond daughter." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "That's not all, Christine. The Angel comes later in life, if He sees a child who won't behave, won't listen to the song in her head, or won't practice. Then He waits until she has learned the error of her ways before blessing her efforts with His presence."

"I practice," she said quickly, winding a lock of hair around one finger and tugging on it nervously.

Her father reached up and rescued her finger from her hair. "I know, Christine. But to some, He never comes...those who hate, who joy in evil, those who anger the Angel, they will never hear Him." He sat back again, slowly. "Aye, if their hearts are black as coal, if they have no knowledge of virtue, then the Angel will never come."

Christine shivered and sat up straight, vowing to herself she would never be one of those unfortunates. She'd do her needlework every day, and she wouldn't skip practice any more. The Angel would come to her -- He had to. But how could she tell when He did? "Daddy? What does He look like?"

"No one ever sees the Angel of Music, little one." Her father wasn't looking at her, but gazing at the rain beyond the barn door, eyes distant as if listening to a far-off symphony. "They only hear heavenly voices, divine music, at the moment when they expect Him least. After that, they cannot touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without putting all mankind and his works to shame." He sighed, then looked back at her, stroking her hair back out of her eyes.

Christine sighed also, dreaming of the day when she would hear that heavenly music. "Was that how you heard it, Daddy?"

He bent and picked up his violin again without meeting her eyes, and began carefully rubbing it with the cloth he took from his pocket. "I never truly heard the Angel, Christine," he said quietly. "I've never been able to live up to His dictates." He looked up at last, the old naughty twinkle in his dark eyes. "But that doesn't mean you won't. When I die and go to Heaven, I'll ask him to make a special visit."

"Oh, Daddy!" Christine shook her head at him. He didn't need to make the promise: she already knew it would happen. When her father was dead, if the Angel of Music had not yet visited her, then at last He would come and she would be the most beautiful singer ever.  
  
_  
Poor, silly, vain Christine. I had not yet met Raoul de Chagny, but my life already wound around stories. Long before he ran into the sea after my scarf, I had been brought up on tales of angels and spirits, of the handsome prince who appeared out of nowhere to save the beautiful young maiden from the ugly demon. It was easy to convince myself we two embodied those tales, especially when we wandered about together as children do, and were teased gently for being such a perfect couple, with my fair childhood prettiness and his innocent face under a cap of dark hair._

_Poor silly children that we were...  
_


	2. In which an unexpected audience occurs

CHAPTER ONE

(in which our heroine has an unexpected audience and hears a ghost story)

_My father died, very suddenly, scarcely a month after I entered the Conservatoire. I'm not certain how I continued living after that. He had been the center of my life, the heart of my existence, for so long that I didn't know how to live on my own. Perhaps it was the generous care of Mme. Valerius, a long-time friend of my father's, that forced me on. What I remember best is no such practical stuff, but instead clinging to my old belief in the Angel of Music, and to the hope buried deep in my heart that my father would keep his long-ago promise._

_I graduated from the Conservatoire near the bottom of my class. Through the good offices of Mme. Valerius, the managers of the Paris Opera Populaire granted me a job. Not as a soloist, of course: all my talent, my potential, had apparently died with my father. But they allowed me to sing in the chorus. It didn't really matter to me, though I had once dreamed of being a diva. I spent most of my time alone, either sitting apart at rehearsal, or wandering about the Opera House, trying to distract myself from the grief that constantly threatened to overwhelm me._

_Then I found something I hadn't expected._

"Hello? Is anyone here?"

Christine cautiously edged the door farther open and looked inside. There was no one seated at the grand piano looming in the center of the room. Yet only moments before, beautiful music, unearthly music somehow come to earth, had whispered from this room and drifted down the hall, drawing Christine from where she'd sat on the floor trying not to think about anything, calling her to follow...

She shivered with something not quite fear, not quite delight. Perhaps it was a lingering memory in this place, the ghost of some long-ago love...or Someone more than a mere ghost. Why not look closer? Another delicious shiver ran up her spine at the thought, and gave her the courage to step inside the room and approach the piano.

There was no dust on the keys -- but that meant nothing. Heaven knew one tripped over door closers everywhere one went in the Opera, why shouldn't there be piano dusters? It might have been a man who'd played that haunting music...but it might have been the Angel of Music. Christine shivered at naming her hope, even to herself, and moved forward a few more steps.

A score lay on the piano, scattered as though hastily abandoned. Its notes were written in ink red as blood, both accompaniment and voice. Christine couldn't see any accompanying libretto, no words to be sung. Her eyes returned to the music. She could almost hear the musical line in her head. If only she could get the starting pitch! Her hand went to the keyboard hesitantly, as if drawn there against its will by the power of the music before her eyes.

Then a nearly physical shock shook her, as a chill danced down her spine. She could feel someone else in the room, the composer of the blood-red music, angry that she dared disturb him and invade his solitude. Christine shrank back from the haunted piano, but the music called her with a voice louder than its composer. She hesitated, looking at it again.

All nonsense, surely, she thought, slowly moving back to the keyboard. No Angel, no ghost, only a mortal man who'd stepped out for a moment. If she were at all sensible, she would turn around and leave now before he returned, whoever he was, and caught her at her dreaming. Mme. Valerius would shake her head kindly and send Christine to bed with a hot posset if she heard. But still she reached out and inexpertly struck the starting note for the vocal part.

Then she could hear it. Note followed note so easily; even under her unskilled hands, the music enchanted like no music she'd ever heard before. It soared in unearthly beauty, music that caught her soul in a golden net and drew it from dark grief to bright sunlight. Before she could stop herself she'd abandoned the piano and was singing the notes -- no particular words, merely nonsense syllables -- and still she sang better than she had in years, sending her soul soaring with the music as it had when she'd sung with her father's violin so long ago --

The thought broke her absorption in the music as effectively as cold water thrown over her. The feeling of being watched returned, even stronger than before, and somehow not as hostile. Christine pushed the half-hearted hope aside, furious at herself for acting as she should not have, singing what she should not have, trespassing on music as intense and private as her sorrow. She ran all the way back to her dressing room and locked the door, just in time to collapse into tears. Never again, she swore silently. No matter how lonely and isolated she felt, no matter how friendly or spiteful other chorus members might be, she wouldn't leave the sanctuary of this dressing room -- no, not for the Phantom of the Opera himself!

_Of course I knew of the Phantom of the Opera. One could scarcely live in Paris in those days, much less work in the Opera, and not hear of the Phantom. Even I, reserved and isolated, stood in the corridors and eavesdropped on the gossip of the ballet 'rats' about him._

_In truth, I needn't have bothered with my careful eavesdropping. People in the Opera could scarcely talk of anything else. The Phantom was apparently everywhere. When stage ropes were cut, dropping the curtain right in the middle of La Carlotta's showpiece aria, the Phantom must be up to his old tricks -- no matter that even the stagehands rolled their eyes at our diva's over-developed voice and arrogant manner. When Meg Giry missed her makeup, the Phantom must have borrowed it; when Cecile Jammes couldn't find her shoes, she shook in her bare feet, wondering what she'd done to offend the Phantom -- but those I believe were practical jokes, more likely committed by another dancer than any ghost. When the chandelier mysteriously began to shake, however, or I saw ahead of me in the corridor the figure of a man, who vanished by the time I reached the spot, without my looking away from him more than a moment...well. I would have been very hardened if I hadn't at least wondered about the Phantom._

Yet I didn't fear him. Perhaps my isolation, or my continuing grief, protected me. Heaven knows everyone else held him in terrible awe.

"...and so deep-set you cannot see them. All you can see is..." Buquet paused for dramatic effect, then leaned forward and lowered his voice, "...the empty holes of a skull!"

His audience of ballet 'rats' gasped in appreciative horror. Christine shook her head and smiled, watching them from the shadow of a looming set piece. The Phantom, always the Phantom. Even Buquet, serious and unimaginative Buquet, was telling tales of a skeleton in evening dress he claimed to have once met in the cellars. Her father had told better ghost stories than this. No matter how grisly the description --

"He only has three or four long, dark locks of hair that hang over his forehead and behind his ears. His skin is ugly yellow, and tight as a drum," Buquet continued in an impressive whisper, "and you can't see his nose unless you look at him full-face." He shivered. "You can't imagine how horrible that lack of a nose looks."

-- but there was nothing more than description. What had the Phantom done? Christine turned away, impatient with her own interest, then hesitated as one of the dancers piped up. "What about what the fireman saw?"

"The fireman?" another demanded. "What happened?"

Christine looked back. This was something new.

"Weren't you in the auditorium the other night? The Phantom was seen again!"

"What, in the auditorium? Impossible! He never comes up there, he always stays down --"

"No, silly, the fireman was in the auditorium. He nearly fainted from fear, because he'd seen the Phantom."

"Really!"

"And he didn't look like M'sieur Buquet's description at all. He didn't have any body at all, only a head all aflame!"

"The fireman?"

"The Phantom, silly."

"Are you sure, Cecile? A fireman wouldn't be afraid of fire, of all things! Fireman are brave!"

"I was there, I saw him! He was scared out of his wits, just ask anyone!"

"But M'sieur Buquet just told us --"

"Don't you see? The Phantom must have more than one head, that he changes whenever he wants!" At that thought, the entire collection of girls shuddered, and several glanced over their shoulders, crossing themselves. Even Buquet shook his head and shivered.

"Enough about the Phantom, girls," another voice said -- the ballet-master, hidden behind a chance drape of curtain. "Do you not have rehearsal?"

With a sigh, the group of girls gathered themselves together, and hurried off en masse toward the ballet-master. Christine watched them go without moving herself. Just a silly ghost story -- her father would have laughed.

"They don't know what they're talking about," a voice muttered from just behind Christine, startling her out of her sorrow. "Flaming heads, skeletons in evening dress..."

Christine could barely breathe for a moment, imagining the notorious Phantom had heard the gossip and come to...correct it? Then she recognized the voice, and breathed again. "Meg Giry," she said softly. "What would you know about the Opera Ghost, besides what you hear in rehearsal?"

"My mother -- you know her, she's the concierge -- she speaks to him. She says he can't be seen at all."

"Speaks to the Phantom!" Christine looked over her shoulder, but she could see no smirk on Meg's pretty face, no hint that she meant a joke. Nonetheless, the idea refused to penetrate. Ghosts were ghosts, not people, and the Opera Ghost had already proven himself special. The notion of speaking to him as one might any ordinary man -- impossible!

"Oh, yes," Meg insisted, coming around to perch on the edge of the set piece. "He has Box Five, on the First Tier, reserved for every night, and he knocks on the door to let my mother know when he's arrived."

"Oh, indeed?" Christine discovered she still knew how to smile, after all. "And is the Phantom punctual?"

"It's not funny, Mademoiselle Daae. If he knew I were telling you this..."

"What if he did?" Christine said, though she obediently swallowed her smile back down. "I doubt he would drop the chandelier on our heads merely for talking about him, not when so many others do the same."

"I don't want to get him angry, that's all," Meg said uneasily. "He spoke to the managers, got me promoted to the front of the row..."

"If he's pleased enough with your mother to help you like that, I shouldn't think a moment's slip would anger him that much," Christine said, amusement receding. Now that she thought of it, she had seen Meg Giry more often, passing each other backstage. Not a jest, then. Not laughable enough in any case to push away the clouds covering her soul for longer than a few minutes.

"Oh, yes!" Meg cheered up a bit, blessedly oblivious. "He tips her regularly, sometimes as much as ten francs when he's been away. He arrives sometime in the middle of the first act, and asks for a program, and a footstool -- but Maman says that's for his lady, not himself --"

"He's married?" That had to be a jest.

"I don't know...Mademoiselle Daae, we really shouldn't be talking like this..."

Christine glanced behind her again. Now she felt it too: the neck-prickling sense of being watched by an unseen observer. But it didn't feel angry, it felt...admiring? She must have lost her mind. Few enough men looked at her with admiration as it was, and certainly none would admire her for gossiping like a schoolgirl!

_This is not to say that Opera folk spoke of nothing except the Phantom. There was the Gentleman In Lavender, who wrote lovely poetry to every chorine in turn; there was the Persian, who watched everyone as if he suspected them of some elaborate plot and who always turned up, backstage, when we least expected him; there was the Comte de Chagny, who was carrying on an outrageous courtship of the premiere danseur. But I paid most attention to the tales of the Phantom. They reminded me a little of the ghost stories my father used to tell. As the months passed, however, I became preoccupied elsewhere...with an admirer I could see no more than the Phantom. Someone who spied on me in my dressing room._

_It looks sordid, written down here in black and white. After all, proper young ladies are not supposed to enjoy a voyeur on their nakedness. They are to keep their knees together and their skirts down at all times. Had I been more certain of myself, I would have reported a Peeping Tom to the management or the gendarmes, and had myself transferred out of my dressing room._

_But I had immersed myself in my grieving for too long, and begun to emerge too late. I had few friends, a scattering of fellow chorines and ballet rats, and certainly no admirers who followed me back to that solitary dressing room. If I tried to tell anyone, they would surely think I had gone mad. The room was, after all, supposed to be haunted._

_If I tried to tell anyone -- but I did not, and I will not speculate longer on might-have-beens. I was not shocked and frightened, as a 'proper' lady would have been. Proper behavior, standing behind a dead father and a sweet but weak guardian, had gained me only an isolated dressing room and a career without hope of advancement. I did not turn around when I felt the skin-tingling awareness of being watched, nor attempt to approach whoever it might be. But I would pose for him, when I thought he wouldn't suspect, taking longer to draw off my stockings than strictly necessary, or not pulling on another dress as soon as I had taken one off, giving him a glimpse of my scantily-clad body -- such as it is. I have never been the most voluptuous of women, certainly nothing on the order of La Carlotta's magnificent curves. Nonetheless, it gave me a naughty thrill, to think a man would want to spy on me._

_Now, Carlotta, for reasons of her own which I could not then fathom, came to listen to general chorus rehearsals every few weeks. I suspect now she was watching to see if any were good enough to rival her. Even if that were her reason, I still cannot explain what she thought to accomplish when she approached me, one afternoon, perhaps two years after I joined the Opera._

"Christine Daae?"

The singer with whom Christine had been talking murmured an excuse and escaped offstage. Christine herself folded her hands tightly together to keep from nervously reaching for her hair, and turned to face the speaker -- a tall, swarthy, dark-haired woman who carried herself with boundless arrogance. "Yes, Madame?"

"I am La Carlotta," the woman declared. "The diva of this opera company. You are a chorus girl. Do we understand each other?"

Christine blinked in bewilderment, and gripped her hands even more tightly. "I was not aware there was anything complex to understand, Madame."

Carlotta leaned forward, hands on her hips. "Understand this, then, Mademoiselle Daae. I have sung hundreds of roles. I have been acclaimed by royalty and heads of state. I have never sung off-key or too softly. Men have died, gladly, to please me."

"I fail to see what this has to do with me." What in pity's name had she done to offend the diva? Perhaps she'd accidentally upstaged her during a recent performance. But she had no control over blocking --

"You are just a chorus girl, and lucky to be that," Carlotta continued in a hiss. "God only knows what idiot told you that you have talent, because you don't. You sing like a rusty hinge on a good day -- and the rest of the time like a crow three days dead. If you have any sense, you'll go back to whatever village spawned you, Mademoiselle Christine Daae, and leave the Opera to those of us who do have talent. You never will, not if God sent down all his angels to help you."

"Carlotta." One of the managers -- Debienne, the taller one -- stood behind the diva, frowning. A pulse of hope went through Christine's heart: perhaps he would say something, offer her a small role, tell Carlotta to stop browbeating the chorines at least. "Come," he said, and offered his arm to the diva. Christine's spirits sank. "You have a rehearsal also, do you not?" He glanced over his shoulder at Christine as they walked away, and Christine heard his final comment dreadfully clearly. "Must you speak so plainly? It's hard enough trying to make a silk purse out of that sow's ear without you discouraging..."

Christine swallowed and pinned a cheerful expression to her face as she left the stage. Her father had told her she had talent. But that had been long ago...and what good was the word of a father who promised the Angel of Music? No Angel had come to her in all the years since Daddy's death. Perhaps the Angel of Music had come to Carlotta, she thought dismally as she walked back to her dressing room. Perhaps this was the message from her father, so long awaited: 'apologies, but you do not have enough talent after all, and the Angel of Music has better things to do.'

At last she reached her room. Only when her dresser was dismissed and the door safely locked did she allow herself to collapse into tears. Certain phrases echoed too clearly in her ears: _"You sing like a rusty hinge on a good days...it's hard enough trying to make a silk purse out of that sow's ear...God only knows what idiot told you that you have talent...not all of God's angels --"_

"I tried," she whispered to the air. "I tried, Daddy, but it won't work." She gulped back the lump that threatened to block her throat. "Carlotta's right: I don't have talent, I haven't for years if I ever did. Why did you lie, Daddy? Why didn't you just tell me the truth? It wouldn't have hurt for as long..." A sob hiccupped out, and she sagged on her seat, letting the tears escape. "There is no Angel of Music, is there, Daddy? There's no heavenly angel who grants music...why didn't you just tell me I'd never be any good, Daddy?" The words came out choked, hardly intelligible. He'd have to understand them as they were. She wanted to scream them, but not even here could she do that. "Why? Why build me a, a castle in the air you knew I'd never inhabit?" She couldn't manage words any more. She gave up and cried.

She'd gained control of her sobs before she realized she'd been hearing the singing for quite some time. As she listened, her tears dried on her cheeks.

It was a man. At least she thought so. She'd never heard such a singer before, so beautiful a voice. She turned to the door, convinced for a moment that some great visiting tenor had been given a dressing room nearby, and was using the privacy to practice. No, Meg Giry would have mentioned it, or someone would have said something. Besides, they would never give a great tenor a dressing room here, so out of the way. Who could it be? No tenor on earth had such resonance, such incredible purity of sound --

No...tenor...on...earth.

What about Heaven?

The singing grew louder. It emanated from the mirror, the reflection of Christine's tiny window outside. Christine slowly walked toward the mirror, then knelt before she could talk herself out of it. Let this be true, let this be the Angel of Music and not some cruel joke.

The singer paused, and silence stretched out, short as a heartbeat and long as eternity. Then a Voice spoke, and lifted Christine's heart from the floor.

"Good evening, Christine Daae."


	3. In which a decision is not made

CHAPTER TWO

(in which our heroine cannot make a decision)

* * *

_Thus began three months of the sublimest joy I have ever known -- and the keenest frustration. Not from grief: my sorrow faded from my mind like a shadow beneath the sun of the Angel's influence. Rather, the Angel Himself frustrated me, strange though it seems to say. My mind, my heart, my voice, my soul itself, my whole being was absorbed in the worship of my Angel. I was childishly possessive of Him, and refused to tell anyone, even Mme. Valerius, exactly what I did during those long hours in my dressing room. But He never seemed to notice my absorption or obsession, still less return it. He remained detached and remote._

_It did not matter. Simply to be in His presence fulfilled me, even if I could not see him. I would record every moment in my mind so I might take it out later in the privacy of my lonely bed and listen to it once more before holding it to my heart as though a lover. My Angel was stern, even cold, as He spurred me on to even greater accomplishments. He rarely praised me. I still obeyed, nay, glories in His ever order. I was a votaress of the Angel of Music, I told myself proudly, and tried to put aside my more human feelings towards Him._

_They would not be entirely repressed. I loved my Angel, if one could be said to love an disembodied voice. I adored Him as passionately as I had grieved my father. I sat over my dresses and costumes with needle and thread so they would show me to greater advantage than previously, I took more care with the face-paints I wore on stage, I even chose lingerie of fine linen and laces. But I never dared even ask my Angel if it were He who had watched me over the months, still less admit my love. Of course not. He was one of the highest Angels in Heaven. I was a mere mortal, a chorus girl at the Opera. What would He care for my heart?_

_Yet He was always waiting whenever I came to my dressing room, before or after a performance. I could feel His presence as though He actually stood before me, a man of flesh and blood. Thus, as I changed my clothing, whether or not my dresser was there, would fell into the habit of talking aloud, as though to myself, about anything that came to mind. No doubt my dresser thought me very eccentric, at the least. I cared not. My Angel was there, and that was all that mattered._

* * *

"Messieurs Poligny and Debienne are leaving their positions at last, I understand," Christine said one night, drawing up her skirt to undo her garters. She could afford only one pair of silk stockings, and wore them for performances only; outside, plain wool must do. A pity. Silk felt wonderful against her skin.

Only silence answered her, as usual, but Christine could feel her Angel watching her. She smiled to herself and drew one stocking slowly down her leg, allowing herself to enjoy the slide of silk against her skin. Perhaps it was sinful, but she remembered the same feeling of eyes upon her for long before her Angel spoke. He might be divine, but she was human, and woman, and not unwilling to remind Him of that as often as she might.

"There is to be a great gala performance this Friday," she added lightly, dropping the silk stocking on her dressing table and picking up its woolen counterpart. "I wonder why they are so overjoyed about leaving." Naturally her skirts had to be raised even higher to adjust the garter on the wool stocking, then dropped as she lowered her foot from resting on the chair, then raised again as she put her other foot there.

"I know." The Angel's voice resonated in her head. Did it sound a trifle more hoarse than usual, or was that wishful thinking? "And you must be prepared to sing in it."

"I?" Christine stared down at the silk stocking in her hand, and realized her hand had involuntarily clenched around it. She forced herself to relax. "All the roles must have been assigned weeks ago. Besides, La Carlotta will never --"

"You will sing at the gala, Christine," the Angel said quietly. "No need to fear Carlotta's wrath; it is her role you will sing."

"Carlotta's role?" Christine caught back a surprised laugh. One simply did not laugh at the Angel of Music. "I do not understand," she said, putting down the silk stocking and picking up the wool one to hide her confusion. "Carlotta has an understudy...and even if she didn't, she would never allow me to sing in her place."

"Carlotta's petty jealousies matter not," the Angel said. "It is My will that you shall sing in her place. You need know no more."

Christine shivered at the chill in his voice. "I...I meant no impertinence."

"I did not believe you did." The Angel's voice seemed to retreat away from her, despite the reassuring words.

"No!" A gasp of fear caught in Christine's throat, and she reached out toward the reflection of her window involuntarily. "It has naught to do with You, only my own silly fears, I don't feel ready for something like this..."

"You need not fear," the Angel reassured her. His voice once more filled her mind, gentle and warming as a lover's embrace. "Even as you sing, I shall be with you. Only trust Me and obey Me, and you will sing like an angel yourself, and all Paris will be at your feet."

* * *

_Despite His assurances, my belly still filled with butterflies as I awaited my entrance that Friday. Carlotta was down with a headcold, her understudy mysteriously fallen ills, and by some miracle of the Angel's doing, M. Poligny had learnt that I knew the pieces Carlotta was to perform, and came to me to replace her._

_I drew a deep breath, and heard in my mind, my heart, His voice. It filled me like a growing child, and I had a momentary vision of myself swollen with a babe, and a faceless man standing before me, a man who was nonetheless my Angel. For a moment the vision calmed me...and excited me, recalling my dreams that bewitched me with memories of His voice, tantalized me with shadows and frustrated me as I reached out to Him and found only mist beneath my fingers._

_Then I heard my cue, and slowly walked out on stage._

_'Tis strange. I remember with perfect clarity what I was thinking about just before the gala. I can also recall what happened after the gala. But the gala itself, my first triumph, I cannot describe with any great degree of detail at all. I remember tensing with fear for a moment, just before I first began to sing -- not fear of Carlotta, though she would certainly make my life a misery for this triumph in her place, but fear of failing my Angel. As He had bidden, I relaxed my muscles, clung to His teaching, and lost myself in the joy of singing. And when I finished the final trio of Faust and stood breathless between the other singers, listening to the applause and watching the entire auditorium rise to their feet in tribute, it was certainly not fear that filled my heart._

_I glanced up at Box Five, half-expecting to see even the infamous Phantom applauding -- but as always, there was no sign of anyone in the box. For a moment I actually felt disappointed, before my mood swung to hysterical amusement at my own vanity. Expecting a ghost to applaud me! I nearly burst out laughing there on stage...but then my head began to swim, and Meg Giry helped me off-stage, applause still ringing in my ears._

* * *

"Mademoiselle Daae, there's someone here who wants to meet you!"

"Christine, the managers sent their congratulations!"

"Carlotta will be livid with jealousy -- the Comte de Chagny --"

Meg shut the door of Room 13 on the crowd outside as Christine sank into her dressing-table chair. The mirror reflected back her pale face, without revealed the turmoil behind her eyes, the near-panic that made her hands tremble in her lap and her breathing catch and flutter in her throat. Her voice seemed beyond her control now: she barely knew it herself. Where was her dresser? Had Meg sent the woman away? Oh, if only her Angel could appear, right then, in front of her, and take her in His arms, and say --

"Heavens above, Christine, you've been hiding your light under a bushel," Meg said, her slightly nasal voice breaking into Christine's thoughts as she came up behind Christine and bent to unlace the singer's costume. If she had sent the dresser away, at least she meant to take her place. "I've never heard so beautiful a voice from La Carlotta, for all her posturing and airs." Her hands on Christine's laces hesitated a moment, and she sighed wistfully. "What's your secret? Do you have a secret alchemist who spins sound into gold for you?"

"No alchemist," Christine said, smiling at Meg in the mirror, though the younger girl didn't look up to see it. "Besides, a golden voice would be too heavy to use."

"That's not what I mean," Meg said, looking up at the mirror in her turn to meet Christine's eyes with a would-be stern look. "Who taught you to sing like that? You used to sound..."

Like a rusty hinge, Christine thought. But she would not embarrass Meg by saying it.

"...not as well as now," Meg finished instead. She looked away a moment, then leaned forward, her chin resting on Christine's head. "Could he teach me?"

Christine opened her mouth to say no! , then hesitated. No, Meg -- sunny, superstitious Meg who loved dancing but also loved a glass of wine and the attentions of a handsome man -- would never hear the Angel of Music. But surely she deserved more than 'no'. Meg, of all people, might understand... "No," she said slowly. "But...it's hard to explain why. Meg, do you believe in stories?"

"Stories? Like fairy tales?"

"I suppose so." Christine reached up and took Meg's hand where it rested loosely on her shoulder. "My father always told me stories of an Angel of Music that would come to me when he died. For years I dreamed He'd come to me in a flash of light. But it wasn't like that."

"Angel of Music?" Meg shook her head and quickly finished unlacing Christine's gown. She clucked her tongue disapprovingly, either at the story or at the lacing, Christine wasn't certain which. "Christine Daae, what sort of daydream is that?"

"It wasn't just a dream." Christine twisted around to look her friend in the eye. "That is who teaches me. I hear Him, here, in this room, every morning."

Meg stared at her. "But...stories don't come true like that." She sounded like a bewildered child. "Even I know that."

Christine turned back around, her eyes falling on her reflection yet barely seeing herself. "Oh, Meg, I can't explain it properly, I don't have the right words! I can hear Him calling me sometimes, beckoning me to ever-greater heights from Heaven itself...and yet He's always down on earth with me, no matter where I go, close as my shadow..."

"Christine, you're making no sense," Meg said, putting her hand back on Christine's shoulder and shaking her slightly. "It isn't like you to...to talk like this. Are you feeling well? You did faint, after all --"

"I don't know." It hadn't worked. Meg hadn't believed her. For a moment, Christine let her eyes close on a greater darkness: a friend bemazed, her voice beyond her own control, her Angel beyond even her dreams --

Then...a ripple of fire along her skin and within her heart, as if she'd heard His voice. He was there, she knew it -- there, watching, listening.

"Perhaps I am mad," she said softly, rising to her feet. "But I prefer madness with my Angel to the sanity I suffered before."

Silence fell for a moment. Christine carefully drew her costume down off her shoulders, off her hips, the soft fabric caressing her skin like His hands, then stepped out of it entirely. She turned away from the tall mirror almost reluctantly, going to the wardrobe to hang up the costume and take out her street-clothes. She jumped when she heard Meg sigh.

"Have it your way, then, Christine. I only wish this Angel of yours weren't so secretive. I could use a private angel myself. Where did you find him?"

Christine smiled to herself, holding her dress to her breast with one hand. "He found me," she said quietly, shivering with a dark joy. "He's here now."

"Christine? Christine!" Meg seized her free hand, eyes going from the hand to Christine's face. "Merciful heavens, Christine, your hand is chill as a corpse!"

Christine turned away, gently pulling free her hand and laying her dress on the dressing table. "At least my spirit is no longer dead," she said softly.

"And your face is pale as a ghost...Christine, are you certain you're well? Do you want me to call back your dresser, or fetch you a glass of wine?" Meg glanced at the door uncertainly.

"Quite certain." Christine summoned a smile for the younger girl. "You'd better go, or you'll miss the dinner entirely."

Meg reluctantly left, and Christine picked up the gown she was to wear to that same dinner...then laid it back down. The Angel was with her here, now. She had little desire to go down and face the jealous or curious stares of the other singers at the dinner, little desire to leave His presence.

"Are you well, Christine?"

Christine smiled despite herself, and stretched sinuously, feeling a pleasant exhaustion creep into her awareness as tense muscles and vibrating nerves began to relax at last. "Only tired. Keeping up to Your high standards would wear out any woman."

"So long as you love only Me."

"I sing for You alone." Christine felt her cheeks heat, and bent to pick up her gown again to hide her embarrassment. Love only the music, He had said often enough before now, but never had He demanded what she truly wanted to give. "I have given You my soul..." she dared a look at the mirror, but it remained inscrutably blank except for her own reflection. "...and exhausted myself."

No answer. Perhaps He had left after all, though her skin still prickled with the sense of His presence. Christine bit her lip, and irritably threw her gown back on her dressing table. She must take off her face-paints before she could dress, at least if she thought to dress alone. She sat down in front of her dressing table and began to wipe her face clear with one of the rags she kept there.

"No emperor could have so rare a gift."

Her hand froze at the rich murmur of His voice.

"The angels wept tonight, Christine."

She put down the rag, clenching her free hand as she felt herself blush again in unwilling pride. Such praise -- oh, she felt giddy, as if the words had gone to her head. No wonder He so rarely spoke thus to her.

A moment of silence passed while she collected her composure, and finished removing the paint from her face.

"Christine."

The whisper was so soft Christine was scarcely certain she heard it. She raised her head slightly.

"Get dressed, ma chere," the breath of Voice advised her. "Even an angel may be tempted at last."

Christine looked back over her shoulder at the tall mirror, eyes wide. Nothing, only her own surprised expression looking back at her. No sign of the Angel, no sense of His immortal presence any longer.

Maybe she'd imagined it.

Christine rose to her feet and picked up her dress again, smiling to herself.

Then again, maybe not.

* * *

_This does not, of course, correspond with Raoul's account of that evening. He would have you believe that he entered my room, spoke with me, and tried to soften the hard heart of cruel Mademoiselle Daae. Raoul was ever overly fond of his own importance. And yet...and yet...he was young, and handsome, and the first man who spoke of love to me.__In truth, I did not see him in person until nearly a month after the gala._

* * *

"Christine! Christine Daae!"

Christine turned quickly, half-expecting to find herself finding herself facing another stranger who wished to belatedly (very belatedly) compliment her on her triumph at the gala while ogling her body, another obstacle to avoid. Instead, she saw Raoul de Chagny, running down the hallway to catch up with her. Once at her side, he smiled down at her, catching his breath. "You walk faster than you used to, Mademoiselle Daae."

"Perhaps," Christine said, looking away from him. "What are you doing backstage, monsieur?"

"Renewing an old acquaintance," he said with slightly petulant cheerfulness. "My elder brother has brought me here several times recently; he's enamored of the principal danseur and wants the excuse. And I saw you, and wanted to speak with you. I came with him on the night of the gala, but your door was closed --"

"So you have spoken with me," Christine said, trying not to sound as impatient as she felt. She had no desire to talk about the Comte: she'd heard more than enough about his courtship of Sorelli, and the one time she had met Phillipe de Chagny, he had looked down his nose at her and turned his back as if she were not worth even the looking. More importantly, the Angel waited for her even now, in Room 13. "You have no reason to linger, I have not lost my scarf."

Raoul's face crumpled as if she had called him hard names. He did not protest, only looked at her with the same lovely brown eyes that had won her heart years ago, and held out one hand beseechingly.

"Please, Raoul." Her voice softened despite herself. "I must be going."

"You weren't like this before," Raoul said, not petulant but wistful. He let his hand fall back to his side. "You always had time to spend with me."

"But I am a grown woman, now, who must work for her living," Christine said. "Just as you are a grown man."

"Of course." He bowed to her, hands correctly folded behind him. "I am honored to have seen you again."

"The honor is mine. Perhaps I shall see you later." Christine turned and hurried down the corridor before Raoul could answer, as quickly as manners would allow.

The Angel was indeed waiting. No sooner had Christine locked the door than He demanded, "Why are you late?"

"An old friend wanted to greet me." Christine went over to her dressing table and began idly rearranging the pots there, trying to pretend she wasn't avoiding looking up at the window or the mirror. Raoul had been more than a friend for just a little while...but that was long ago, she assured herself, and sat to hide the fact that her legs trembled.

"The Vicomte Raoul de Chagny is an old friend, is he? How charming." The Angel's voice cut with a cold fury Christine had never heard before, not even when she sang her worst.

"I knew him when we were children," Christine said quickly -- too quickly, she realized as she heard herself, but the words were already out. "My father used to tell us stories, and give him violin lessons. We were children."

"Your face is flushed, Christine," the Angel said, voice still sharp as winter wind. "What are you hiding from Me?"

Christine felt herself flush even more, but paused a moment before answering. "Nothing," she said finally. "Monsieur le Vicomte hasn't...grown up...well."

Another, longer silence. Christine held her breath. When the Angel spoke again, He spoke only of music.

* * *

_With that encounter, the fat was well and truly in the fire. Silly, inexperienced, ignorant girl! Raoul took my 'perhaps' as a promise rather than politeness: as the weeks passed, I could scarcely turn around without encountering his expensive gifts, his charming words, his reproachful notes, or Raoul himself, watching me with those brown eyes that begged for attention like a puppy's._

_I felt flattered -- who would not, pursued by such a devoted admirer? Besides, once, years before, I had fancied myself in love with him. A suitably tragic affair, since our stations in life separated us, until the more practical separation of distance broke it off. Now we had more still to divide us. Even if we had been of the same rank, even had I wished to take Raoul for my suitor, my bond with the Angel of Music forbade any admirers that might take me away from the music._

_Alas, I had little choice about listening to Raoul's suit. He became more and more insistent, sensing my hesitation...for after a while, in spite of my better judgement, I began to thaw to his courting, remembering the boy he had been and seeing him in the man he was now. The Angel of Music, in turn, more and more often seemed to forget Himself, and spoke in cold anger that at once terrified me with the prospect of His leaving me alone, and thrilled me with the childish thought that He spoke so out of jealousy._

_It should have been a simple choice, perhaps. My invisible Angel laid all Paris at my feet, and made me feel feminine, sensual, even wanton, in ways that Raoul could never begin to approach. But how can one have a love affair with a man -- a Being -- one has never seen and cannot touch? How can such a love last? I had loved Raoul once, after my youthful fashion, and he wanted to make me love him again. But he seemed so young, as though he were still the boy I had loved, and I -- I did not know if I were still that girl. And so I hesitated, trying to choose which path to take, what to do..._

* * *

"Have you decided?" 

The quiet finality of the words froze Christine in the act of removing her face-paint. He slowly put down the rag, and studied her reflection as though she'd never seen herself half-made-up before, trying to keep her eyes away from the accusing image of the tall mirror "Decided?"

"You must do so eventually," the Angel reminded her, oh so gently...yet Christine could hear the steel anger beneath the velvet of His voice. "You have not sent your lover away as I bade you. I do not make empty threats, Christine."

"Wait!" Christine turned hastily to face the tall mirror. "I beg of You, don't leave --"

"Then decide."

"I..." Christine sighed. A headache pressed at her temples. If only -- oh, if only her Angel were real, were a mortal man, then this would be simpler. And if wishes were horses...stop wishing for what cannot be, Christine Daae. "I go to Perros tomorrow." The new managers had quickly forgotten her again, so permission to escape for a day had been easily obtained.

"For the anniversary of your father's death, I know," the Angel said, His voice gentle once more. "He smiles on you every day, I swear it." He paused for a moment, then His voice hardened. "But you wish to ask him about your lover."

"Raoul de Chagny is not my lover," Christine protested, but hesitated before going on, summoning her courage. "I did send him a note, telling him where I am going. Please, I am trying to make up my mind to send him away..."

"I know," the Angel said, His voice soft as a lover's touch once more. "Only be faithful to Me, resist temptation...and I shall play for you, on your father's violin, at his tomb at midnight."

Christine bowed her head to hide her relief. She would have to succeed somehow. She had loved Raoul once, when a child. Now she was a grown woman, and the Angel held her heart and soul. She could never give Him up.


	4. In which our heroine visits PerrosGuirec

CHAPTER THREE

(in which our heroine pays a visit to Perros-Guirec)

_

* * *

I arrived in Perros a day before Raoul, determined to make my choice. I knelt on the cold stone floor before the Virgin in the church where my father was buried, and prayed for the courage to dismiss Raoul de Chagny and with him all my childish dreams of romance and love, and instead devote my whole heart to the Angel of Music and the worldly success that would surely follow. Then I prayed, with tears on my face, that if this desire for love could not be wrenched from my heart, that the darker desires that filled me -- for success, for admiration, most of all for the Angel Himself, a desire strong as Eve's -- should be burned from my soul so that I might allow myself to accept love and marriage like any other woman._

_Perhaps, had Raoul arrived in time and said the correct things -- reminded me of our childhood together, under the loving eye of the man he mourned, too, and offered me not merely his heart but his name -- he might have swept me off my feet, and I might have succeeded in locking away those half-named desires for something more. But he did not. He came the morning after the Dream._

_

* * *

_

"Christine."

She opened her eyes to darkness. For a moment she strained to pierce the shadows, then relaxed once more into the undemanding warmth of this midnight world. "Who are you?" she whispered back, allowing her eyes to drift half-closed again.

"An admirer."

The voice tugged at her memory, discordant against the black velvet of those words. She frowned and opened her eyes again, drowning the nagging feeling in the reassuring darkness. "Do I know you?" she asked at last, when the quiet began to wake her.

Soft laughter drifted around her for a moment. "I watched you from afar for longer than you could know." A sound from off to her left, as though the unseen speaker moved slightly. "Oh, Christine…if you knew the truth, you would have fled me long ago."

Why would I flee from you? You're my --

Don't be a fool. Angels can fall, remember the stories the priest used to tell.

Christine licked her lips. "What harm could you do me?" Her voice sounded lower than usual, rough in her throat.

Silence fell for a moment. "All the harm in the world," the other said at last, voice husky. "Do you not know your own power? Have you no idea how much I desired you as I stood and watched?"

Fallen, fallen…even an angel may be tempted. She'd tried to tempt him; surely none could blame him. "I…think I understand," she offered.

She heard a hiss of indrawn breath. "Do you, child?" A whisper of air caressed her shoulder -- dear heaven, she wasn't dressed -- as if someone in the darkness had moved closer. "I am lost before you. I have only to see you, standing in your chemise, and I want you. Your lips lure me until I can scarcely restrain myself from taking your wrists, pulling you to me and kissing you until your lips ache."

Christine looked up, feeling heat rush to her cheeks, hearing again a rustle as though he moved still closer, circling her.

"That would be only the beginning. I would tug your chemise from your shoulders, and follow it as it fell with my mouth…" The voice paused, and Christine could hear a long, shuddering breath. "If you knew how often I dreamed of touching you, of tasting you until you cried out my name…"

She could feel the heat of his body now, just behind her, as he breathed the words into her ear. She closed her eyes, not daring to look back.

"That I wanted more than anything, my love. Did you never think on it? Never imagine me with you, lost in blessed oblivion?"

The voice fell silent for a moment, as if awaiting an answer, but Christine could not find her breath, not even to whisper the yes that sat on her tongue. At last he sighed. "Then it cannot be. Fare thee well, Christine Daae. Dream of me."

* * *

_My Angel in truth, descended from heaven? Some ghost that haunted the inn? A mortal man who had somehow followed me to Perros and slipped into my room? Or simply a dream, the product of my overwrought imagination? I wanted it to be anything but the last. When I woke in the morning, I remembered that voice of the night with a guilty pleasure which rapidly turned to shame -- and fear. I could not, I must not allow myself to think of such things. It would resolve nothing._

_In this frame of mind, I greeted Raoul's arrival the following afternoon with giddy relief, hoping to forget my troubles for a little while._

* * *

"Raoul!" Christine swallowed a smile when she recognized the man standing by the fire in the Setting Sun's common room -- he would not understand the reason. "I had a feeling I would find you here when I returned from Mass." She didn't quite swallow her laugh as she remembered the 'feeling' in question, and went over to stand by the fire with him, hoping he hadn't noticed. "Someone told me so, in church."

"Who told you so?" Raoul asked, catching up her right hand in his and looking at her…well, Christine supposed he was trying to look lover-like. His hat had fallen sadly askew, however, making his hair fall into his eyes, such that he looked more like a puppy than ever. She pushed the irreverent thought away, and defiantly left her hand in his.

"My father," she said, as much to the fire as to Raoul. "My poor dead father." Remember that, Monsieur Angel who presumes to visit me in improper dreams, she thought fiercely. My father approved of Raoul de Chagny! Except for the minor matter that her father hadn't told her anything in church. Not unless her father had taken to impersonating the wife of the station-master, with her abysmal taste in gowns and worse taste in bonnets, who'd patted her on the hand and assured her in a voice that carried to whomever cared to listen that the diligence from Lannion would arrive shortly after mid-day, and certainly her young man would be on it.

Raoul leaned forward, thankfully unaware of Christine's thoughts. "Did your father also tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I can't live without you?"

These were strong words, if he truly meant them -- certainly more than she had expected, despite all his courtly behavior back in Paris. "You love me?" Christine blurted, feeling herself blush, then shook her head. "Don't be silly, Monsieur de Chagny." She forced a laugh this time, and turned away from him toward the unfortunately empty room. If only it were a little later: Raoul would never dare force the issue in front of an audience. What was he thinking?

"Don't laugh, Christine. This is serious."

"Raoul, I didn't write…I didn't ask you to come here to swear eternal love." She wanted no one's eternal love, Christine thought crossly. The music came first, at least for now.

"You made me come here." Raoul still hadn't let go of her hand, and his voice, though gentle, was too intense for Christine's liking. "You knew your letter wouldn't let me rest, knew I'd follow you to Perros as quickly as I could. How could you know that without knowing I love you?"

Christine shook her head, trying to find words. "I thought…" She hadn't thought, that was the problem. Of course Raoul would follow, and they would be able to talk as freely as if they were still the children they had once been. "I thought…you'd remember the way things used to be," she said. "Oh, I'm not certain what I thought! I shouldn't have written at all. You reminded me of my childhood, and I wrote you as if I were still a child, who wanted her friend with her when she was sad and lonely."

Raoul met her eyes for a long moment, then let go of her hand abruptly and began pacing around the room. Christine folded her hands behind her and remained still, trying to enjoy the warmth of the fire as well as she might in such disturbance of spirit. Before she could begin to calm herself, Raoul turned on his heel and looked at her, face-on. "Perhaps you should have asked the other man, then, if you wanted a companion?"

"Another man?" As if she had some other suitor? "What are you saying? What other man are you talking about?"

"The man to whom you spoke in your dressing room after the gala," Raoul said sternly, folding his arms over his chest. "The one to whom you said, 'I sing for you alone.' The one to whom you gave your soul, and exhausted yourself!"

Christine's head spun. She felt blindly behind herself for the mantel of the fireplace, and gripped its edge tightly. It felt cool and solid under her hand, biting into her palm when she pressed too firmly. She did not dream, then. "You listened at my door?" she asked, surprised at how even her voice sounded.

"I love you," Raoul said, apropos of nothing. "I heard everything."

For a moment, Christine felt a rush of burning indignation -- what sort of man eavesdropped at a dressing room door? -- but no, there were greater matters at hand than a mere question of impoliteness. She let go of the mantel and stepped forward, closing the distance between herself and Raoul. "What did you hear?"

Raoul frowned at her, brow wrinkled in an odd combination of anger and confusion. He let his arms fall to his sides again. "Mademoiselle Daae -- Christine, are you well? You look --"

"Please, Raoul, tell me what you heard!"

He hesitated for a moment, then said in a rush, "He said 'You must love me.' You told him your soul had been in his keeping since the beginning, and he thanked you, he said 'no emperor has had so rare a gift. The angels wept tonight, Christine.'" His fists clenched, then relaxed again; his eyes stabbed at her. "You left a minute or two later."

No. Oh, no. Christine nodded once, to show that she had heard, but words were beyond her. She turned and fled upstairs to her room.

* * *

_Of course Raoul did not understand. He believed himself very sensitive, but in the end, he was but a boy, and knew very little of the world. He thought I was upset because he'd discovered my lover. In truth, I was upset he had discovered my Angel._

_I had told Mme. Valerius of my Angel, swearing her to secrecy -- but though she believed me implicitly, she never came to the Opera with me, and certainly not to my dressing room. I had always been alone there, except for my dresser, who perhaps noticed my eccentric behavior, but showed no sign of observing anything else out of the common way. There had never been any other listening when I spoke with my Angel._

_Nonetheless, Daddy had said the Angel came to one person, and one alone. I had thought this meant no one else could hear those heavenly tones. Yet Raoul had heard my Angel speaking, had repeated the exact words (though he had not, thank God, heard the seductive whisper of warning that had finally sent me on my way -- that would have sealed me in his mind as lost to all goodness, and I shudder to think what rashness he might have attempted)._

_There was a note wrong somewhere in this song, but I could not yet name it. I dared not ask Raoul's help -- after all, I had gone to Perros to find the courage to send him away. But I nonetheless sought out Raoul that evening to at least tell him the truth of what he had heard._

* * *

"Are you waiting for the goblins to come out, as they used to when we were children?"

Raoul rose to his feet instantly at the sound of her voice. He'd been seated on the ground at the edge of the graveyard, staring out over the moorland that extended far out beyond the graves. "Christine --"

She raised one hand, and he stopped short. "Listen to me, Raoul," she said, keeping her voice as steady and quiet as she could. "I must tell you…" The Angel of Music. Oh, but how to tell him? "Do you remember the story of the Angel of Music?"

Raoul laughed, his stance relaxing -- he'd been standing at attention like a soldier on parade. "How could I not! You used to demand it from your father every day." He smiled indulgently down at her. "And then he'd promise a personal visit from the Angel once he was dead."

"Yes, he did," Christine agreed, taking a deep breath to steady herself. Why did she feel as if she were betraying a sacred trust? Surely her old friend deserved this much kindness. "Well, my father is in heaven, and I have been visited by the Angel of Music."

"I'm sure you have," Raoul said promptly.

Christine walked closer, trying to read his expression in the darkening twilight. He'd always laughed gently at her belief in those old stories. "Are you certain you understand me?"

"It's not difficult to understand, Christine." Raoul sounded superior, even patronizing. "Only a miracle could have let you sing as beautifully as you did the other night. You've heard the Angel of Music."

How very unflattering. Had Raoul thought her voice so thin, so unworthy of praise, even when she was young and full of hope? No, stop, she was not here to ask such questions. She had not finished telling him what she had come to say. "In my dressing room," she said. "He comes every day to give me lessons."

That shattered his complacent look. Raoul stared at her as though she'd lost her mind and hunted it among the leaves at her feet. "In your dressing room?" he echoed blankly.

"Yes. I've heard Him there…" another deep breath - only a few more words! "…and I'm not the only one."

Raoul's eyes narrowed. "Who else has heard this Angel?"

"You."

"I?" Raoul laughed, shortly, 'ha-ha.' "Christine --"

"He was the one speaking with me while you eavesdropped," Christine said steadily. "He told me the angels wept. I thought none but I could heard him."

Raoul laughed again, genuine laughter.

It stung worse than his anger. "Why are you laughing?" Christine demanded, losing her hold on her temper. "Didn't you hear a man's voice?"

"Well…yes, I did," Raoul said, his voice faltering. The moon had begun to rise, enough for Christine to see his expression more clearly: unfortunately, he only looked confused. "But…"

"But what? You knew me in childhood, and I have not changed so greatly in the years since we knew each other. I am an honorable woman, Monsieur Vicomte de Chagny, and I don't shut myself up in my dressing room with strange men. If you had opened the door, you'd have seen no one there except for me -- despite your laughter!"

"I know," Raoul said. "I looked after you left."

"And?" Christine could hear the thought waiting.

Raoul looked out at the graveyard for a moment, then back at her. No puzzlement, nor amusement: his face looked perfectly clear and serious. "I think someone is playing a joke on you."

A joke?

Christine did not run this time. She turned on her heel and walked away, without looking back.

* * *

_The Angel was no joke -- even to Raoul, I believe, the difference in my voice and indeed in my very being was too striking to be the result of some idle game. Yet this much truth pierced my heart as I walked away from Raoul: if he, who did not even believe in the Angel of Music, could hear the Angel, what did that mean? For the first time, the notion that my Angel was not, in fact, an angel, but a mortal man, crossed my mind as more than a momentary yearning. I thrust it away. It could not, must not, be true._

_So I went to my midnight appointment, heart heavy with a confusion of guilt and fear. Only be faithful to Me, the Angel had said, and I was far from certain I had lived up to those standards. But nonetheless, I found my father's tomb in the church graveyard, and there hesitated for a moment, feeling terribly unsure of myself and what I should do next. _

_Then the violin began, and that heavenly music drove out all my lurking doubts and sent me soaring among the clouds to sit on the moon and laugh at the stars. I no longer felt the chill on the night wind through my thin cloak, or the damp cold of the graveyard grass on my bare feet: there was no more sickly-sweet smell of the old flowers lying on the next grave over, or dull clouded darkness of the night sky overhead. There was only the brilliance of music, warming me as nothing else could do._

_When at last it ended, I turned and left the graveyard still wrapped in its spell._


	5. In which the Opera Ghost appears

CHAPTER FOUR

(in which our heroine steps through the looking-glass and sees a ghost)

_I returned to Paris the following day, with my mind in a worse state than when I had left. I came down from my room, the morning after that night of heaven's own music, to find Raoul collapsed into a chair in the common room of the inn. With no more prompting than an inquiring look, he confessed he had followed me to the graveyard the previous night. He would not say why he had done so, however, or why the excursion had left him pale and wan, while I was the picture of health. He only shook his head, and frowned like a graybeard, and muttered something about death's-heads that made no sense to me._

_So I returned to Paris, alone, and wrote him a note bidding him to leave me and never see me again, which I sent off to await him at his lodgings. I hoped, rather than believed, that Raoul would obey my wishes -- if I had learnt nothing else at Perros, I had learnt that the power of an Opera chorine over the Vicomte de Chagny extended only so far as the Vicomte chose to extend it, no matter how long the acquaintance between the chorine and the Vicomte._

_Paris, at least, offered me, not solution, but distraction. A production of Faust was to go up in a week's time, and the new managers proved they had not, after all, forgotten me by offering me the role of Siebel. Alas, La Carlotta, long since recovered from her cold was to sing the role of Marguerite -- and she had not forgotten me either._

_

* * *

_

"So our so-innocent ingénue has resorted to anonymous notes to achieve her aim." Carlotta's voice, startlingly loud in the hush of pre-performance backstage. 

Christine took a deep breath, then let it out and leaned in toward the mirror propped up in an out-of-the-way corner of the flies, for chorines and dancers to look themselves over one last time before stepping out onto stage. "Anonymous notes, Madame?"

"With handwriting a child could see was falsified," Carlotta confirmed, voice vibrant with scorn and contempt, then switched to a sing-song tone: "'If you sing tonight, you will endure a fate worse than death. You should develop a cold, or lose your reputation.' Did you think to frighten me, Mademoiselle Christine Daae? 'A fate worse than death' -- there is nothing such as you could do to me!"

"I wrote no notes, Madame," Christine said, smoothing out a smudge of kohl next to her eye with a careful finger. Anonymous notes? Why would Carlotta have received anonymous notes -- and why would she accuse Christine? Christine's triumph had hardly been so great that men had fallen in love with her on sight. Except Raoul. Yes, but Raoul would hardly resort to anonymous notes: he would speak to the managers directly.

My Angel?

Ha. As if the Angel of Music must resort to writing notes. More likely that the Phantom had done it; hadn't he dropped a curtain on Carlotta a few months ago?

"Deny it as you will," Carlotta said, her voice dropping to a furious hiss. "I shall sing tonight, no matter what. Your plot shall not succeed -- I have seen to that!" She turned on her heel and stalked away.

Christine watched her go in the mirror, frowning. She could hear the orchestra tuning up for the overture. 'I have seen to that' -- what had Carlotta done? What good would it do to commit herself to the music if Carlotta was bent on destroying her career before it had hardly begun? The Angel could give her a voice from Heaven itself, but it would accomplish nothing if she were never given the chance to use it. Perhaps she should go to Box Five instead, and ask the Phantom's help, Christine thought with a half-hysterical giggle. The ballet girls said he'd murdered Joseph Buquet for nothing worse than talking about him; what more terrible things could he devise for an arrogant diva whom he already delighted in tormenting!

No. Not even to Carlotta could she do that. She might wish, in the privacy of her own thoughts, that Carlotta would strangle on her own conceit, but she would not go to the Phantom and ask him to do it for her. He might not like her voice any better. She would trust in her Angel, and pray all would be well. It was better thus.

Christine checked her costume once more in the mirror, and went off to the wings to await her cue.

* * *

_Trust in my Angel -- ha. I had not, despite my best attempts, succeeded in driving away the doubts that had arisen in Perros. A thousand things distracted me from the concentration needed: Carlotta's spiteful glowers from the wings, Raoul's mournful looks from his brother's box, and the sight of the new managers seated in Box Five. The corps de ballet hissed and fluttered amongst themselves, swearing that M. Moncharmin and M. Richard had put the house under a curse by sitting in the Phantom's private box, and we should all be ruined. Certainly we singers could hardly hear our cues over the whispers. Worse, Meg clung to me every moment we were both off-stage: her mother had been fired from her position, what were they to do, they could not live on her salary as a ballet rat. I did not sing like a rusty hinge that night, but I cannot, in good conscience, dispute the loud comment from the audience that I was 'bleating'._

_All chatter silenced when the 'toad' struck. For a moment I thought my heartless wish had come true, and Carlotta was strangling on her own pride, and I pressed forward through the throng of gaping dancers and stagehands to see, hardly daring to breathe. Carlotta had the extensive, powerful vocal range of which she had boasted to me all those months ago: there was no reasonable explantion why her voice should give out so. Then I remembered the note for which she had demanded an apology. 'A fate worse than death!' I leaned forward, as nervous as Carlotta, as she attempted the fatal phrase again._

_I confess, I felt a moment of vicious satisfaction when her voice failed her again. But then I heard the mocking laughter, and the cry, "Behold! She is singing to bring down the chandelier!" I ran out on stage just in time to see the enormous, glittering thing fall headlong onto the stalls._

_The entire theater panicked. The audience fled for their lives, as if a second chandelier would fall should they not escape, and we, up on stage, ran too. I remember being illogically terrified. Not for Raoul: I had seen him, after all, safe in his brother's box, if a little wan still from his adventures in Perros. Nor even, precisely, for myself. I only knew that I must see my Angel, I must speak with my Angel and be certain He was safe in the midst of all this disaster._

_So to my dressing room I ran. I retained just enough prudence to close the door behind me, then fell to my knees before the mirror and begged my Angel to speak to me, to say anything, only assure me that He yet lived._

_

* * *

_

For a short eternity, there was only silence, her own breathing loud and shaky in her ears. No, no, impossible, no…please, Angel, if ever You have heard my prayers, please… The words would not come, only that dreadful silence.

Then she heard His voice, a fragile thread of melody that knotted itself reassuringly in her mind. He lived. He lived, and the music shifted even as she opened her eyes and raised her tear-stained face to the mirror, to something more than comfort, to -- to -- why could not she name the song her Angel sang? She knew this music. It lived in her heart.

Christine.

Nothing so overt as words, only the music, beckoning her towards her tall mirror. Come to me. Only believe, only be true, and you may come to me at last. Down, down, dropping into a minor key. A palace is worth nothing, in solitude. Come to me, my own, my Christine --

Her dressing room seemed to have bent and shifted, somehow. She had been no more than two steps away from her mirror, surely, yet her image wavered in front of her, then receded rapidly to vanish into darkness. She hurried her step, one hand out to catch herself --

-- and between one step and the next found herself in utter darkness, unbroken except for a faint red glow. After the bright lamps in her dressing room, she might as well have put on a blindfold. She turned to go back, but only darkness lay behind her as well. Where was her Angel? She couldn't see anyone else at all, even if someone else waited here.

As if the thought had been a cue, something encircled her left wrist with a firm, but gentle grasp -- something that common sense said must be a hand, but surely no human hand, nor angelic hand neither, was that cold and thin. Christine tugged at the grasp, but instead of letting go, an arm came around her waist, drawing her toward the source of the red glow.

This couldn't be. Where in the name of pity was her Angel? But she dared not struggle, not until she at least knew the identity of this mysterious person. She nearly tripped over her own shoes at least twice before they reached the glow's source, a torch set into a recess at the crossing between two corridors, like something out of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Christine's captor let go of her at last, and Christine turned to look up at him, mouth open to speak.

Nothing came out but an airless gasp. A tall man stood next to her, face turned away as if he watched for something down the corridor; he was dressed in evening clothes complete to black cloak, and even with his face turned away, she could see the edges of a black mask covering his face. Mary the mother of saints protect her: this was not her Angel, this was -- Joseph Buquet had described the Phantom of the Opera looking much like this, but why would the Opera Ghost kidnap her away from her Angel? What did he want with her?

The Ghost turned back to her, frowning (though she could not have said how she guessed it, not with the mask). He raised one hand and laid his fingers against her lips. So cold, that hand -- where was her Angel? -- so cold, so cold, breath strangled on a scream within her throat --

Christine fainted.

* * *

_I woke to the sensation of cool, damp fabric on my forehead, and opened my eyes to discover this man -- this Phantom, as I had identified him -- bent over me, watching me intently. I sat up, dislodging the fabric: the Phantom caught it easily, wrung it out quickly on the floor, then folded it again as if it were his pocket handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket without apparent care for what it might do to his clothing. _

_I watched this, mouth agape, still dizzy from my fainting spell and the more terrible disorientation of finding my Angel snatched away and replaced by the Opera Ghost. Then I seized his sleeve -- I could not touch his flesh and feel that dreadful chill again -- and demanded to know who he was, what he'd done with my Angel._

_He looked down at me, head atilt, but did not answer me. Instead, he rose to his feet and beckoned to someone or something. I looked in that direction just in time to see Cesar clip-clop forward. I pushed myself to my feet as well, far less awkwardly than I expected -- I still wore Siebel's costume, and there are little-realized advantages to masculine trousers -- and tentatively reached out to pat Cesar on the nose. He had vanished from the Opera stables, perhaps a week previously. It seemed that the whispers had been correct when they claimed the Phantom had stolen him. He seemed like a breath of reality in the chill dream-land where I found myself. When the Phantom took me by the waist and tossed me up onto Cesar's back, I did not protest._

_I remember that first journey down to the house beyond the lake with the same preternaturally clarity as I might an extraordinarily vivid dream: the luminous whiteness of Cesar's coat; the distant hellish glow from the furnaces that heated the Opera House, down at the far ends of the labyrinth of corridors we traversed; the ache in thighs and back from riding bareback and astride; the occasional glint of eyes whenever the Phantom looked back from where he led Cesar along. He let go of Cesar's reins, sometimes, and came to walk alongside us and pat my hand in still-silent reassurance. The chill of his touch seemed all the more marked as we descended into ever-greater heat._

_Yet it no longer frightened me. I had stepped into a world beyond even the familiar backstage of the Opera, called by the Angel of Music who had vanished before me and left, as if in His stead, the terrible Phantom of the Opera, who was even now kidnapping me off I knew not where. But my terror had crested, and now receded like a wave back to the ocean. The Phantom did me no harm. He did not even presume to touch me beyond what a gentleman would do. He had bathed my temples with his own handkerchief when I fainted. And his eyes on me felt like a reassurance rather than an invasion, as if he said aloud Nothing can harm you while I am here, not even I myself._

_So I lapsed into a trusting, dazed half-trance, watching the cellars pass by as we descended deeper and deeper, watching without seeing until we reached the lake of which I had heard tell, far beneath the Opera. The Phantom came around and reached up to help me down. I permitted this, too, without protest. He set me on the ground and hesitated there a long moment, looking down at me from behind that inscrutable mask, then stepped back and turned to guide Cesar to wherever he must go. I stood there and bit my tongue on an illogical feeling of abandonment. He was not my Angel, I told myself in an attempt to find my spirit again. He had stolen me away from under my Angel's very hands (a weak theory, but I could invent no better explanation as of yet). I should not, must not, give in so easily._

_Before I could resurrect either my anger or my terror, however, the Phantom returned and offered me his hand again. I followed to a boat, previously unnoticed, moored by the edge of the lake. He helped me in, then stepped in himself, nimble despite the inevitable rocking, and poled us across. I thought of the travellers' tales I'd heard of the gondolas of Venice, and stifled an inappropriate laugh. This was not that sort of story. I had somehow found myself in a darker myth, and it only remained to determine where this modern-day Charon was taking me._

_

* * *

_

The boat bumped into…something. A dock of some sort, Christine assumed, dredging up what few memories she had of visiting the seaside when a child. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to stay still while the boat skewed sideways, then rocked side to side. What was the Phantom doing? Tying up the boat, perhaps. How dreadfully prosaic.

Within moments, however, he appeared before her, hardly visible in the darkness except as a glimmer of pale shirt in the thin light. She offered him her hands without waiting to be asked, self-consciously aware that she was far from certain how to get out of the boat without falling into the water, and felt her wrists grasped -- apparently he could see better in this light than she. A gentle tug, a few careful steps out of the boat, which rocked alarmingly under her feet, and she stood upon solid ground once more.

The Phantom let go of one hand, but kept hold of the other, leading her along, once more, she knew not where. At last he paused, and as if obedient to some unspoken command, a door swung open before them, and the Phantom drew her forward again, into a…drawing room.

Christine stared around her. No, it really was a drawing room, such as you might see in any house in Paris. Dozens of candles lit the space, nearly blinding her after the darkness of the cellars and the lake -- but such brilliance surprised her not half so much as the flowers. The room seemed filled with flowers. Not darkly exotic flowers, either, such as she would have expected from a sinister Phantom: there was hardly a scarlet rose or white lily to be seen. These were commonplace flowers such as anyone could buy in bunches from a shop, complete with silk ribbons and ridiculous baskets.

"Very well, monsieur," she said at last, breaking the silence. "You have stolen me from the Angel and kidnapped me down to the depths of the Opera House to give me flowers?"

"No, Chr -- Mademoiselle Daae. I am not so mad, no matter how it may seem." A moment's hesitation, then, rapidly, "I swear to you, you are in no danger here."

Christine hardly heard the last sentence. She knew that voice, her Angel's voice that had sounded in her ears and in her dreams for months now. She whirled to face the speaker, heart in her mouth, but she saw only her kidnapper, the Opera Ghost in his black and white, standing with his hands folded in front of him. Had the Angel spoken through him? No. Impossible. A fool's grasping at straws. "What sort of trickery is this?" Her voice came out quiet, hardly more than a whisper, when she wanted to scream. "You are no Angel. He would not --" She reached out to snatch away the mask, for a moment fearfully certain that this was not the Phantom either, but some prankster from the Opera subscription list who fancied a prank.

Her wrist was caught in an iron cold grip. No, not some prankster from the subscription list. That detail could not be falsified. The Phantom pushed her back, gently, until her knees came up against a chair and she had to sit down or fall. "I should correct myself," he said, still in that glorious voice she had thought an Angel's. "You are in no danger, as long as you do not touch my mask." He knelt down before her, free hand resting lightly on the arm of the chair, while the other still clasped her wrist in a more gentle hold. "I swear to you, it conceals nothing you want to see. For the rest, I would rather die than hurt you."

Christine could not meet his eyes. All a lie -- it had all been a lie. There was no Angel of Music; there never had been an Angel of Music, only this ghost, this man who spoke with heaven's own voice but wasn't her Angel. The tears welled up, and she did not try to blink them back. What was the use of control now?

"I am not an angel, no. But neither am I a ghost." His hand on her wrist tightened for a moment, then vanished. "I am only Erik."

* * *

_Of course I did not want to believe it. Who wants to be told that she has put herself so far into the power of a perfect stranger? In pursuit, worse, of a dream that never existed except in the idle fancy of a storyteller -- hardly strong enough stuff on which to base a life, as I had based mine. I attempted to rise and leave, though I have no notion where I thought I could go; someplace where I could pretend I had never come and learned there was no Angel of Music. But Erik caught my hands again, and forced me to listen…and as I listened, my heart softened despite myself. There he knelt before me like a suppliant, cursing himself for the long masquerade, begging me to forgive him even if he did not deserve forgiveness -- he did not confess to being the unseen watcher who had observed me for months before the Angel spoke, but neither did I press him when he looked away and broke off awkwardly in the midst of confession._

_He did it for love of me, he said. I did not know what to say, I admit. I had sung of such a love on the stage before this, but never seen it, certainly never felt it. My affection for Raoul was a sweet, childish, timid thing, next to this overmastering obsession. He had abducted me out of love, he said, and wept before me._

_I stood up at last and demanded my freedom. I could only despise him if he kept me prisoner, I told him proudly. And he agreed, he offered me my freedom instantly. I could go whenever I pleased; if I chose, he would show me the path now. But he rose to his feet as he said this, and began to sing._

_He was not the Angel of Music my father had promised. But he still possessed the voice of the Angel, the voice I had once thought could sing my soul out of my breast._

_We spoke no more that night. He sang me to sleep._


	6. In which a mask comes off

CHAPTER FIVE

(In which our heroine makes one choice concerning masks)

_

* * *

In my dreams that night, I stood before Erik on a cold, deserted, windswept plain. I reached out, and this time he did not prevent me from removing the mask from his face. I dropped it, watched it fall to the ground like a wounded bird, then raised my eyes to find the face of an angel, inhumanly beautiful, looking back at me. He smiled and offered a hand to me._

_I stepped forward, my hand rising to clasp his -- then his face seemed to twist and writhe, taking on before my eyes Raoul's handsome features. No, not Raoul; perhaps his brother Phillipe, for Raoul had never had that cynical, arrogant, jaded sneer. I snatched back my hand and shrank back. Even as I did so, Erik's face writhed again and became the ghoulish, skeletal face of a demon, of Death himself come to take me for my presumption in daring to love one of God's highest Angels. I attempted to back away, but tripped and fell. He moved closer, leaning in with a terrible dark laugh…_

_And I awoke, shivering._

* * *

Christine sat up, blinking quickly to clear the dream from her eyes. It had been a dream and nothing more, the product of strained nerves perhaps. She was awake now. Only a dream. Breathe in, breathe out. Only a dream, which couldn't touch her here. 

But where was here? Not her small, cold room, with Mama Valerius blowing on the coals. Instead she lay on a chaise lounge in a small, elegant bedroom -- at least she presumed it so, since a mahogany bed stood in the center, canopied in a deep red like spiced burgundy. A lit oil lamp, nearly full, sat on the marble top of an old Louis-Philippe chest of drawers against the wall on the far side of the bed. Surely this had to be another, better dream…except that when she sat up, she'd dislodged a blanket of the same spiced burgundy shade, soft and slightly fuzzy under her hand, and the wood of the chaise's frame felt hard, slightly cold and carved into fantastical shapes under her exploring fingers. Too solid for any dream. She pushed the blanket aside and swung her feet down to the carpet, then remembered.

The night before. Her Angel's voice, calling her out of her dressing room and into the darkness. The journey down on horseback, like memories of a fever-dream. The discovery that her Angel and the Phantom were one and the same, and both nothing more than a man named Erik. Who swore he loved her.

She shook her head violently and rose to her feet to explore the room.

She hadn't expected the comfort she found. A soft carpet under her bare feet, its intricate pattern making her think of Persia and the decadence of the Near East; the warm wool blanket under which she'd slept; the warmth without an obvious fire to provide it. Was this the home of the Phantom who stalked about the Opera House like a skeleton? She tried the doors, and found it opened under her hand, leading to a bathroom of marble and brass. She twisted a handle on the faucet of the sink, and warm water came out, splashing her hand. She leaned forward to rinse the sleep out of her eyes. Not the home of a ghost at all; indeed, this seemed more like the palace of the Angel of Music. Except he is not an angel, she reminded herself as she turned from the sink to find thick cloths in the same deep red as the room, ready to dry herself with, and warm against her skin. How had he arranged all this? Christine couldn't recall hearing of this sort of luxury outside of -- well. Outside of the harems of Persia, come to think of it. Oh, but the bathtub! Christine hesitated in putting back the cloth in her hands, and stared yearningly at the sunken bathtub a few steps away from the sink. Long, hot baths, allowed to soak without fear of interruption from other tenants of the boarding-house…

"No," she muttered, tearing her eyes away. "He promised me a way out. Enough daydreaming, Christine Daae: you're in quite enough trouble for one day, with some to spare for the next."

Unfortunately, neither bedroom nor bathroom proved to have any other doors that she could find. However, on the dresser lay a folded piece of paper with her name written on it in red ink.

She grabbed it and unfolded it, scanning the spidery handwriting. My dear Christine, it ran. You need not waste away worrying over your fate -- I assure you, you have no better or more respectful friend in the world than I. Forgive me for leaving you alone thus: I have had to go out to do some shopping. You may consider the house your own until I return. I shall bring back all the (here there was a blot, as though he had hesitated too long in choosing a word and let the pen drip, or had chosen a word and then crossed it out) clothes and such like you may need when I return. Your servant, Erik.

_

* * *

Erik's note succeeded not at all in calming me. I had not even thought to fear the sort of ungentlemanly behavior against which he sought to reassure me, and how was I to 'consider the house my own' when I could not even leave my room? My servant, he called himself. I scarcely need tell you with what bitter mockery I regarded those words, and reproached myself for my own blindness. He had lied to me, deceived me, taken my girlish dreams and manipulated them into a net in which he had ensnared my soul. I did not regret his leaving me alone: I wanted never to see him again._

_By the time Erik returned, I had worked myself into a fine fury._

* * *

Three taps on the wall startled Christine out of her pacing. She turned just in time to see part of the wall swing into the room, and the man with the mask -- her Angel, her kidnapper, Erik, whatever he called himself -- still in evening dress, stepped in, carrying an armload of hatboxes and packages wrapped in brown paper. Without even looking at her, he moved to the bed and carefully set them down. He moved like a dancer, Christine noticed sulkily, graceful and light on his feet. 

"So there you are," she said. "Are you not yet tired of this game? Or do you mean to continue to keep me prisoner?"

He didn't respond, arranging the hatboxes carefully on the bed.

Christine bit the inside of her cheek, then tried again. "Is the mask part of your charades? Or do you wear it for some other reason? I cannot imagine any reason why an honorable man would need a mask."

"You will someday see my face, Mademoiselle Daae, but not yet. Perhaps not ever." He straightened and looked back at her. "My reasons are my own. However, I beg leave to doubt your knowledge of honorable men if you are in the habit of entertaining company while dressed thus."

Christine's cheeks stung with her sudden blush, and she clutched at her blouse. Siebel's masculine garb was certainly irregular to begin with, with its close-fitting breeches, but a night's sleep had slipped free several buttons on her costume's blouse as well, exposing far more than any generally saw except her dresser. (And her Angel. -- no, she must not think about that!)

"However, I shall assume last night's events unsettled you, and left you unaware of the time. It is nearly two o'clock in the afternoon. I shall return for you in half an hour: I shall have lunch laid out by then." He went to the dresser, picked up her watch, wound it, and set it as she spoke. He turned and handed it to her with an ironic little bow. "For both our sakes, mademoiselle, I beg you: be dressed when I return."

* * *

_I bathed and dressed within the allotted half-hour, still trembling on the edge of hysterical anger and terror, with a pair of scissors by my side the entire while so I might kill myself if that door in the wall opened again before time. The normal, every-day activities of dressing myself improved my mental clarity, if it did not calm my nerves: by the time I rejoined Erik, I had silently sworn not to offend him in any way, but rather to flatter him as I must to win my freedom…entirely forgetting, I fear, his offer of the previous night to show me the exit if only I requested so.__In the event, all my private hysterics were for nothing. Erik played the perfect gentleman over luncheon, answering my questions without hesitation and telling me what he planned.

* * *

_"It will take time before the Opera can open for performance again, after such a disaster as occurred last night. I confess, I enjoy your company too much to wish to lose it so quickly. You have no reason to fear my presence --" 

"So you keep mentioning," Christine murmured. She put down the chicken wing on which she'd been nibbling. "Forgive me, but I find it difficult to completely trust you. You said that -- that --"

"That I love you." His voice was soft and intense, making her skin prickle with unwanted, vivid awareness.

Christine looked away, feeling her cheeks heat in another damnable blush.

"I cannot change my heart," he said in a more normal speaking voice, if anything said in that glorious voice could ever be called 'normal'. "But I desire to win back your trust, not drive it away. If it disturbs you to hear, I shall be silent, and we shall spend the rest of the time with music instead."

"The rest of the time," Christine echoed blankly, pushing away her plate. "How long is that?"

"Five days."

"And then I shall return home."

"Of course, Mademoiselle. After five days, they'll have the chandelier repaired. After five days…you'll have learned not to fear me, to trust me, and you'll come back to visit once in a while."

Christine looked up at her captor from under her eyelashes. He didn't sound…both her Angel and the Phantom always seemed utterly certain of themselves. She'd never heard this wistful loneliness, this deep vulnerability, from anyone, much less that perfect voice. But shadow hid his eyes, and if he wept, the mask hid it.

Before he could catch her staring, she dropped her eyes again to the table. They sat in that disconcertingly dull parlor, but only she had a plate and glass before her, neither of them of the sort to warrant any particular attention paid. She had to say something: the silence had begun to lower and thicken. "Where did you come from, monsieur?" Too bright and cheerful, but she must continue as she had begun. "With the name Erik, I would think you a countryman of mine."

"I can claim no such kinship, mademoiselle," her companion answered, his voice blessedly even once more. "I have neither family nor country, and took the name Erik by chance."

"Then you cannot claim it is your country's custom, to prove one's love by kidnapping the beloved and imprisoning her underground." Christine stopped short and took a breath. Too intense, too quickly. He'd promised to let her go in five days, and yet it wasn't enough. She tried to gentle her tone. "I've never heard of anyone who could fall in love in a grave." She gestured around her, feeling a trifle foolish: the parlor could hardly have looked less like a tomb. "Was there no other way to speak to me than to deceive me and kidnap me?"

"One takes whatever rendezvous one can get." His voice twisted a bit on the words, an odd ironic flavor to them that Christine recognized but could not interpret. Here lay something more than her rejection. Before she could say anything, or indeed think of anything to say, her captor -- Erik, she must think of him by name -- rose to his feet and offered her his hand. "If you are finished, mademoiselle, I would like to show you my apartment."

Christine reached out to take his hand -- and remembered how cold and clammy it had been against her skin. She hesitated for just a moment, steeling herself for the contact, and in that moment he dropped his hand. "Forgive me," he said, golden voice unexpectedly harsh. "I do not go out in society, and so forget that well-brought-up young ladies are not accustomed to touch such as I."

I did not hesitate because of your moral failings, monsieur, but because your hands are cold! But even as Christine opened her mouth to say so, Erik turned away and walked to another door. She sighed, pushed back her chair, and followed him into a room hung with black and red. Like a mortuary -- no, a mortuary would be black alone, unrelieved by any hint of color. This seemed more like an antechamber to Hell. "What is this?" she murmured.

"My room," Erik replied from off to one side.

She walked in slowly, peering through the relative gloom: no oil lamps here, only two candles burning across the room. Carpeting as thick and soft as in her chambers caressed and warmed her bare feet -- the warmth especially noticeable because of the slight chill in the air, where the other rooms held in the warmth almost too well. The hints of red on the walls proved to be a pattern of musical notes against the black, leading to a canopy of red brocade over a…that was a coffin. She looked at Erik.

He looked back, expressionless behind that damnable mask. "I sleep in it. One must get used to everything in life, Christine Daae. Even eternity."

Christine nodded and turned back, attempting to ignore the queer shiver that ran up and down her spine. Beyond the dark pit of the coffin, an organ took up the entirety of the far wall: the two candles sat perched on either side of the music stand. Musical score lay scattered across the stand and fallen on the keyboard, the paper covered with notes like drops of blood. Christine leaned in to look at it closer, then hesitated. It would only be polite…she glanced back at Erik. "May I?"

He nodded once.

She picked up a few of the sheets of paper; at the top of each was scrawled DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT. "Your work." The words came out half-question, half-statement.

"I compose sometimes," Erik said from just behind her (how in the name of heaven had he gotten there? He'd been across the room not a breath before!) "I began that twenty years ago…and when it is finished at last, I shall tuck it away into the coffin and rest at last from my life's labors."

Christine kept her eyes on the score. Neither angel nor ghost, so he too was mortal… "You must work on it as seldom as possible, then," she said awkwardly.

A moment's pause, but no more than a moment -- did he smile, shake his head? She turned her head to see, but even as she did so, he moved past her, taking the pages from her hand. "Sometimes I work on it for weeks at a time, day and night, living on music alone." He bent and began gathering the score together, arranging the pages into some kind of order. "But then I leave it be for years."

"Will you…play me something from it?" The notes nagged at Christine's memory, some image just out of reach. Was this the music he had sung to call her from her dressing room, last night? No, something earlier -- like something from a dream --

"No." Erik set the pages on the music stand without looking at her. "Do not ask me that, Christine. The only Don Juan you know is Mozart's creation, preoccupied with drink and love affairs and all the pleasures of the world, and at the last dragged away to heavenly judgment. I shall gladly play Mozart for you if you wish to hear the story again: you may weep, but you would remain yourself. My Don Juan burns the soul, Christine, and not with the fire of heaven --" He broke off abruptly, abandoning the organ to stride past her, back to the parlor.

Christine hesitated for a moment, looking at the music, then followed. What little she'd eaten felt as if it had knotted into a lump in her belly. M. Reyer shouted at the singers often enough that they needed more emotion, more passion!, and her Angel had bidden her sing with your heart, but though she had trembled, the music had never burned her. No matter how beautiful, it was only music.

In the right hands, sung with all the power of your soul behind me, there is nothing that can be called 'only music'. The Angel had told her that not a week after their lessons had begun. Christine swallowed hard.

Erik seated himself at the pianoforte, and glanced over his shoulder. "You see, Christine," he said, conversationally, as if he'd never stopped, certainly not as if he knew what she was thinking, "some music refreshes whoever hears it, pure and sweet as clear water. But other music consumes like a forest fire whoever listens to it. You are not yet strong enough to withstand it. If you sang it now, no one would recognize you when you returned to Paris. No, Christine Daae…" His golden voice darkened and twisted with something more than just irony. "Let us sing music of the Opera instead."

_

* * *

What did we sing? Something dramatic: the final duet from Otello, if I recall correctly. God knows it seemed fitting. I dare swear I never sang the part of Desdemona as convincingly before or since in my life! I was terrified and exhilarated both, the mingled passions lending power to my voice and dizzying my mind. Erik might love me or kill me, and I would in that instant have given myself over to either._

_The images from my dream returned to me with doubled strength as I sang: the black mask lent itself to the image of Othello. What did he look like, behind that mask? Such music could only come from an Angel -- but what if I was wrong once more? What if he were some bored nobleman, who sought to steal my heart and honor for some low jest? Or worse, what if he were a fallen angel in truth, a demon come to corrupt and damn me like Marguerite in Faust, Death himself come to laugh and destroy me for daring to love one whom I thought an Angel?_

_Curiosity, fear, and that terrible excitement fed upon each other. I could bear it no longer. I reached out and snatched off Erik's mask._

_Oh, God --!_

* * *

"DAMN YOU! Give me back my--" 

No. Oh, God in heaven no, she couldn't look, she must not look --

"Damn you -- no, Christine, you wanted to see your Angel and by God you'll see him!" Hand on her shoulder, cruelly hard, not allowing her to run away, not allowing her to even move. She fruitlessly turned her face away. "No --" Dear heaven, that voice, not sweet and golden now but furious -- "No, look at me -- damn you, look at me, feast your eyes on it!"

He let go of her shoulder, but her knees buckled under her so she almost fell. She couldn't look away now, as if he had chained her eyes to him. This could not be happening, it couldn't be like this.

"Truly something to be proud of, to boast to your friends in the ballet chorus, won't you?" His voice dropped to a soft, sulpherous hiss. He leaned over her but did not touch her again. "They brag of this comte and that duc paying them court, while you have a corpse that loves you and will never leave you, never, not while you live -- are you not proud of it, Christine?"

Christine shook her head frantically, tearing her eyes away from him once more. No use, dear God, that face was burned into her mind --

"Look at me, damn you!" His hand in her hair, not tangled and pulling but tense enough that she knew he would if she did not raise her head once more. "You were so terribly curious a few minutes ago -- but perhaps you think this is another mask. Come, I'll help you pull it off the same way you did the other one --" He dropped to one knee, snatched up her hands and brought them to his face.

"No, please." Was that her voice? It sounded so hoarse and strangled, as if she'd been crying. "No, please, it isn't a mask, I know it isn't -- Erik, please…"

Erik let her hands go. "No."

The silence that followed filled the air until it hurt to breathe, worse even than his anger. Christine looked up again. Erik had not risen to his feet again: he still knelt there, not a step away from her, and this time, without the mask to hide it, she could see his cheeks streaked with the wet tracks of tears.

"Why couldn't you leave it be?" he murmured. "My own mother gave me my first mask so she wouldn't have to look at me. You would have returned, before…but now you wouldn't return at all, so I can't let you leave." He rose to his feet once more and vanished into his room without a look back.

_

* * *

If only he had not been right._

_I had loved my Angel of Music, loved him with an innocent's quick and complete passion. But the Angel of Music was not real: he was a story for children, as much a mask as the fabric I still held crumpled in my hand. Behind the mask stood Erik, a man. A man with a face like death, the Phantom of the Opera indeed. Perhaps, if I had not given in, I would indeed have returned of my own free will, and learnt to know this man with a voice like an angel's, before being confronted with the devil. Perhaps. If I had not given in._

_Oh, I wanted my Angel, then. The might-have-beens crowded my mind like shouting children, and I sat on the floor and wept like a child myself, impotently furious at my own fear and curiosity._

_Then, through my tears, I heard music._

_Not the music that had lured me from my dressing room the previous night, nor yet the music that now I remembered, that had called me to a deserted rehearsal room in the basements, months before. But it held the same uncanny magic in its notes: wistful and haunting, the melody of unending pain and anger learning at last to love, daring to look up and be loved in return. Erik's composition. No wonder he spoke so slightingly of 'music of the Opera'._

_I took a deep breath as I had been trained, gathering courage from the music. Then I smoothed out the mask I still held, rose to my feet, and went to his door. My bravado took me a step inside, then deserted me._

* * *

The music fell silent as Christine stopped, just beyond the doorway. Erik rose to his feet, but did not turn around. 

Christine looked down at the black silk in her hand. "Erik. I --" She what? What could she possibly say under the circumstances? "I beg your pardon for the intrusion." So stiff and formal. Well, they would have to do for a beginning.

"I bade you consider this house as your own," Erik said, still not turning around. He sounded as formal as she did. "You need not apologize. Was there something you wished?"

Christine took another breath -- funny, the room smelled of incense and candlewax, like a church rather than a tomb -- and deliberately forced her hand to relax, so the mask fell to the floor. She crossed the room with careful steps, skirting the coffin, and stopped next to him. "Please…"

At last Erik turned to face her. The face didn't shock her as it had the first time, somehow, less the face of a demon and more the face of a man. "Yes, Mademoiselle Daae?"

Christine met his eyes and did not flinch. "You spoke of spending time with music."


	7. In which a different mask is worn

CHAPTER SIX

(In which our heroine chooses her own mask)

* * *

_Two weeks._

_Erik had promised five days, but time spun beyond even his control in a dream-like flow. Once we spent an entire day trading snatches of song back and forth, here the final duet from Aida, there an aria from Romeo et Juliette, or fragments of the Breton folk-songs I had learnt in childhood while wandering with my father; only Don Juan Triumphant was forbidden from our repertoire. Another time I sat with my chin resting on my hands and listened, tea growing cold on the floor next to me, while Erik wove tales of his far-flung travels, twice as enthralling when told in that golden voice of his._

_I do not say I forgot his face. Indeed, he would not permit it: he did not wear his mask again. But that was not the reason why I grew more and more aware of the time passing. Despite every reason to think ill of him, every cause to fear and despise this man, I could not hate him. I pitied him, then liked him. It was not the shameless passion that had drawn me to the Angel, but neither was it the sweet affection that tied me to Raoul. It was a further complication to matters that needed no more complexity. Erik knew too much of me already, and I did not know how to retrace my steps. Somehow, I had to leave.

* * *

_

Erik raised his hands from the piano and let the final chord die away, then abruptly turned on the bench. "I've kept you far beyond the time I promised, Christine. You must be feeling confined down here. Would you care to go out tonight?"

Go out? Leave these rooms? Christine set down her music carefully. "Go out?" she repeated, keeping her voice calm with an effort. "To where?"

"Must we have a reason?" Christine still had difficulty reading that gaunt, twisted face, but she recognized the undertone of thunder in his voice. "May we not simply go for a ride, like any ordinary gentleman and lady?"

"No one could call you ordinary, Erik. I would gladly go for a ride with you." She met his eyes, golden as a cat's, and as always, her breath caught in her throat. Erik had not touched so much as her hand since she had ripped away his mask, but his eyes…when he looked into hers, it seemed as if he could see all the secrets of her heart. And when he looks at my body… If anything, it disconcerted her even more severely, to feel the lick of his gaze along her skin and look up from whatever might be occupying her to find him hungrily watching her as if she hadn't any clothing on. But he never spoke of it, never touched her…never looks away when I catch him looking at me, either.

Erik turned away, and Christine found she could breathe again. "Come, then, Mademoiselle Daae," he said. "And mind your step."

They did not cross the lake this time. Instead, Erik led her out a back door she'd never noticed before (like most of the doors around this place: Erik seemed to have a taste for invisible doors) and down a long black corridor. Twice Erik made her edge her way close along one wall or another. After the second instance, she ventured, "Is something wrong?"

"No," Erik replied absently, from just in front of her. "All the ways down to my home have their particular protections. I would not have you harmed."

So long as I mind my step.

He says he loves me.

Yes, so he says. Raoul loves you as well, without frightening you half to death.

A door swung open before her, letting in light and clear, cool air. Christine stepped outside and tilted her head back, breathing in deeply. She hadn't realized how the closeness of the cellars had tainted the air. By comparison, this place felt fresh and clean as the mountains. "Where are we?" she asked.

"A few streets away from the Opera," Erik said from just behind her. She turned to find him masked again, white this time, with his hat drawn low over his brow. He looked almost…normal. "If you will wait but a moment, mademoiselle…" He walked past her, raised one hand, and beckoned imperiously.

Christine heard hooves, and turned to look, for a moment half-expecting Cesar to re-appear. No. Instead she saw a carriage and four, driven by a man muffled in scarves and a long coat. The carriage drew up just in front of them, and Erik opened the door. "After you, mademoiselle." He sounded almost playful.

Christine murmured, "Of course," and stepped into the carriage.

* * *

_Erik seemed inclined to talk, once in the carriage, but I could think of nothing to say unless I were to inquire after practicalities. How had he hired the carriage to be here? Where would it take us? How long should we be out? I asked none of those questions, however: to own the truth, I half-feared he would laugh and tell me it was all due to black magic. I listened to him, and occasionally answered, but my heart was heavy. Out in the carriage, away from the close darkness of Erik's home, I remembered too clearly the life outside from which I had stepped two weeks ago. I had obligations, I remembered: the Opera, Mama Valerius, my friends, even Raoul. I could not stay. But I did not know how to leave._

_I rested my chin on one hand and looked out the open window, breathing in the fresh air and praying it would calm my troubled thoughts. Erik fell silent._

_Then I heard Raoul's voice, and my fragile peace shattered entirely.

* * *

_

"Christine! Christine!"

Christine sat back from the window, just in time, as the carriage lurched into rapid motion. Her heart pounded in her breast in time to the horses' hooves. Raoul de Chagny. What business had he here? Who had told him to come? How had he known --

Oh, she was a fool. Erik had arranged this before-hand, and not by black magic. If he had mentioned her name at all, then word could travel, either to Raoul or to his brother. Raoul had made no secret of his interest in her, after all. How was she to explain this to him? How was she to explain this to anyone? She looked down in her lap, and forced herself to untangle her fingers and lay her hands flat.

"You shouldn't glower so at your hand," Erik said suddenly. His voice had gone flat, not the terrible harsh voice like a demon's that terrified her, but its golden beauty dimmed. "Or are you fearing what your lover thinks?"

"Raoul de Chagny is not my lover." Though he wanted to be, once… Christine closed off that line of thought firmly. Raoul was not, nor ever had been, more than a dear childhood friend, and Erik was certainly not the person with whom she cared to debate might-have-beens on the subject. "I have told him again and again to leave me alone. I do not know what more I can do."

A moment's silence. Erik was watching her with that sharp golden look. At last, he inclined his head. "Of course not, mademoiselle," he said, gently ironic, as if he understood perfectly. "And yet he follows you still. Such devotion, from a nobleman yet, might turn a woman's head."

"Do you think--"

Erik raised one hand, stilling the angry words on Christine's lips. "No, Christine. I believe you should answer the good vicomte's questions. They must be pressing indeed." Christine's skin prickled as Erik leaned forward and gently took her hand in both his. "Tomorrow night, the Opera goes in masque, and even I can venture out freely. Send a note to this persistent suitor of yours, bidding him meet you there."

"Why should he come?" He was touching her. Erik was touching her. Some part of her mind must be working, else she could not have answered at all, but the rest of her kept very very still, like a mouse aware of a snake waiting for it to move. That door should have remained closed. But he had touched her.

"He shall," Erik said. He still held her hand. "If only to ask his questions. And you must try, once more, to tell him that you must be left alone. You cannot have both the vicomte and the music, Christine."

"I know." The words came out a whisper. If she wed Raoul -- and it would be marriage, he was too idealistic and she too stubborn for the other, more usual arrangement -- then she would never sing again, unless at a small musicale for people who would look down their noses at her and whisper behind their fans about how she used to be an opera singer, my dear, you've heard the story.

Erik said nothing more. He let go of her hand and sat back in his seat, and watched her until they arrived back at the Opera.

* * *

_The note was easily written, if not so easy to dispatch -- letter carriers don't stand around outside the Opera in case they're wanted, alas. The rest…was not so easy._

_They no longer have masked balls as they did then. No invitation need be handed in at the door: anyone might go, wearing any costume they pleased, and behave in any manner they desired. A very few disdained the safety of a domino and strode the halls bare-faced, their expressions as much a mask as the leather and silk and lace the rest of us wore. For the rest of us, chaos ruled: a Columbine here, a lion there, a pagan goddess here again -- whispers told of a gentleman who'd come as Adam, wearing only a fig-leaf and his mask. Even so, Erik produced a sensation. He went as Red Death, wearing no mask whatsoever. Who was he (he asked me, with grim amusement) to taunt Fate by scorning the natural mask with which She had provided him?_

_I, on the other hand, chose a simple black domino. I had only to be at the place I had chosen, at the time I had chosen, and pray Raoul would be there. And if that prayer were answered…well, I should have time enough for more prayers then.

* * *

_

"I'll follow you in," Christine said, keeping her voice as quiet as she might and still be heard as she opened the door. She'd lit the candles near the door before going to meet Raoul: they gave a meager, flickering light. Good. "Keep to the shadows if you can, and for God's sake, let no one see you."

Raoul cocked his head at her as if in puzzlement, but he entered the private box without protest. Out of the corner of her eye, Christine saw him remove his white mask as he turned to face her. "Christine?"

"Yes, of course." Christine pulled the door mostly shut, leaving it far enough ajar that she could peer out at the hallway. Where was Erik? She'd seen him nearby as she led Raoul to the box. He must not hear this conversation, not by chance, not by eavesdropping, no matter what had happened two weeks ago. Or perhaps _because_ of what happened two weeks ago. No. It was because Erik had nothing to do with this, she told herself sternly: it was between herself and her childhood friend, and she didn't care to be constantly biting her tongue for fear of what Erik might think. Where was the man? "Perhaps he went up to the Box of the Blind," she muttered, mostly to herself. Then she saw a flutter of red. "No…ah! He's coming back down."

"Who's coming back down?" Raoul demanded, entirely too loudly, and leaned over Christine's shoulder just in time to see Erik pass the door. Christine heard his breath catch. "It's him," he breathed, then, almost a shout, "It's him! This time he won't get away from me--"

Christine slammed the door shut, just in time to keep Raoul from rushing out. "'Won't get away from you', Raoul?" For a miracle, her voice sounded perfectly steady. "Who are you talking about? Who is 'he'?"

"Christine, let me pass!" Raoul seized her arm as if he meant to physically push her out of the way.

Christine pulled free and braced herself against the door. "Not until you answer my question." She'd expected a conversation, not a confrontation -- not this sort of confrontation, at least. If Raoul ran out and confronted Erik, face to face --

Nothing would happen, she reassured herself. Except that it would anger Erik, and he had no love for Raoul, nothing to hold back that vicious temper she'd seen. What do you think the Phantom would do?

"Who is he?" Raoul repeated, his voice rising. He turned and began to pace around the box, as well as he could without running into the chairs. "The man who hides behind that mask of death that's no mask! The evil spirit that haunted the graveyard at Perros! Red Death tonight! The man you call your friend and your Angel of Music, that's who! But I'll unmask him --" He flung his own mask to the floor, "and we shall stand face-to-face at last, without any disguises or pretenses, and I'll know who loves you…and whom you love." His voice faltered off at the last.

No one! That would be cruel, without even the grace of being true. But neither could she look Raoul in the eye, clearly and honestly, and tell him she loved another. Why did he have to make it so difficult? "Raoul, please --"

"At least tell me the truth," he said, spinning to face her. "Do you love me? Did you ever love me? Or did you set me up as a fool and a puppet, to be deceived and mocked for your amusement? I dared hope, when we met in Perros, there was such joy in your eyes when you looked at me -- I wanted to court you, openly and honorably."

"Raoul --"

"But instead I find..." He broke off, gesturing fruitlessly with one hand. "Madame Valerius told me you were with the Angel of Music. And instead you're at an Opera masquerade with Red Death."

"I'm with you."

"For now. For a few minutes. And then what?"

"I don't know!"

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Christine felt a frustrated scream welling up, but before it could break free, Raoul turned away. "Christine…if you are not deceiving me, then hasn't it occurred to you that someone might be deceiving you?"

He'd suggested this before, Christine remembered, and had to swallow a bitter smile. "This is no jest," she said quietly.

"I know that now," he said, just as quietly -- he'd calmed down, thank heaven. "But Christine, you've been gone two weeks, and if you've been with Red Death…I know what I saw in Perros. You must know this…this man is not an angel. Christine, Christine --" he turned back to her, eyes aglitter in the candlelight, "if you will not tell me as your lover, at least tell me as the boy you once knew!"

"Tell you what?" She still wore her mask, she realized. She reached up belatedly and untied the ribbons, letting it fall away from her face. "You seem to have all the answers settled, monsieur."

She looked up to find Raoul staring at her. He reached up one trembling hand and touched her cheek. "Christine…you're unwell!"

"Raoul, no -- I'm perfectly well." Pale, perhaps, her eyes shadowed. She'd spent two weeks entirely out of the sunlight, often not sleeping as much as she should.

His hand dropped away. "You should -- you must go home. Madame Valerius believes you're with the Angel of Music --"

"You told me so," Christine reminded him gently. "I am well. I'm safe, truly."

"I don't understand."

That was why she'd arranged this meeting, wasn't it? To explain everything? The Angel of Music is a man, true -- a man who is also the Phantom of the Opera, a man named Erik. She bit her tongue instead. "I shouldn't meet you again," she said instead.

"But I'll see you," Raoul said anxiously. "On the stage."

"I don't know." Her music. Another triumph, all Paris at her feet. What had Erik done to give that to her? "I must leave."

"Leave -- Christine!"

Christine pulled her mask back on without answering him, opened the door, and walked away, forcing herself to walk slowly rather than run. The few people passing her didn't give her more than a cursory glance. She heard the door open behind her, and glanced over her shoulder to see Raoul standing in the doorway, looking after her with wide pitiful eyes. She shook her head emphatically. He bowed his head, and his shoulders rose and fell as if with a deep sigh. Then he stepped out and closed the door and leaned against it as if waiting.

It would have to do. She walked down toward the music and the ball.

* * *

_That was not the end of it -- but I did not know Raoul's movements. I myself wandered around the ball, looking for Erik and avoiding the occasional overly-familiar pat of the hand or wet kiss, 'here's a pretty young thing, won't you join us!' At last I returned to my dressing-room: I had arranged to meet Erik there at half-past two, if we could not find each other again at the ball. But it was not yet time. I took out paper, and wrote down the exact truth of what had occurred between myself and the 'Angel of Music', including the truth of what had happened after the disaster of the chandelier, and where I had spent the past several days. This, once written, I folded up and addressed to Mama Valerius. As Raoul had just reminded me, she still believed in my father's fairy tales. I could not endure further deception. If something happened -- if I vanished down into the subcellars and was never seen by polite Parisian society again -- then at least she would know the truth._

_Just as I finished, I heard Erik, singing his way up the path to my mirror. I called out something teasing about his lateness -- and then the witchery of his voice took hold, and I was through the mirror once more, into the world where Angels and Phantoms mingled and became one._


	8. In which unpleasant surprises occur

CHAPTER SEVEN

(In which our heroine endures more unpleasant surprises)

_I slept badly that night, but not because of dreams. I had gone to the masquerade intending some sort of resolution, even if only in explaining myself to Raoul. Instead, I had explained nothing, resolved nothing. Raoul said that Mama Valerius told him I was with the Angel of Music: to whom else has she said that? Did the management believe me lost or mad? Even should I leave Erik and return to the world above, would there be a place for me to return to?_

_By the time my candle burned out, I had half-persuaded myself I did not care. Raoul would easily believe that I had taunted and toyed with him after all, and my acquaintance among the chorus and the dancers would give me up soon enough. Mama Valerius…well, I would think of something, because I could not abandon her. But the rest, I told myself, I could. Let some other woman triumph upon the stage. I would sing for an audience of one in the deepest cellars._

_I cannot know how much of this Erik knew, or guessed. Certainly, he startled me the following morning.

* * *

_

"Good morning, Christine." Erik did not look up from the small box he held in one hand, merely shut it and made it vanish somewhere into the folds of his cloak. "I trust you slept well."

"Well enough." Christine hesitated, but when Erik did not ask further, she entered the room. A small pot of coffee or tea sat steaming next to a plate of muffins, the same sort of breakfast to which she'd awakened every morning for two weeks, as if last night had not occurred at all and nothing had changed. Except something had changed indeed, or else Erik would not be dressed to go out.

Erik waited until she had poured herself a cup of coffee, then said, "Forgive me, but your discussion with the Vicomte last night. All is settled?"

Christine spooned sugar into her coffee, then stirred it. She could still feel Erik's eyes upon her. She could delay until the end of the world, she thought darkly, and Erik would still wait. "I…I hope so," she said at last.

Soft sound of breath being let out. Then Erik said, "Christine."

She looked up from her coffee.

"I…would you wear this?"

With a magician's turn of the hand, he offered her a golden ring. A wedding ring. But not an offer of marriage. How could he think she would accept it? Did he think she was once more so far under his spell that she would forget his manipulations, his lies, his face?

"I do not ask you for promises," Erik said, voice gentle as ever the Angel's had been. He still held out the ring steadily. "Only that with this ring, you allow me to begin again. Allow me to court you like any other man…like your vicomte."

Christine closed her eyes for a moment, unable to hold back tears. Like any other man? When had anything concerning Erik been simple or ordinary? A ring without promises -- how could she accept it?

How could she not?

If only she had sent Raoul away entirely. She could never explain this to him. She gave Erik her right hand, and watched as he slipped on the ring. It fit perfectly, though it felt heavy and awkward. Erik did not let go of her hand for a long moment -- I must not look up, Christine thought, the words dreadfully clear in her mind, if I meet his eyes then a promise will be made and I shall be lost -- then abruptly released her and stepped back. "Finish your breakfast," he said, for all the world like nothing had just happened, hardly even a tremor in his voice. "We must return as soon as you are done."

"Return? To the Opera?" Of course to the Opera, Christine thought furiously, Erik had never met Mama Valerius. Return to the Opera to face Carlotta's hatred, Meg's giggling questions, and Raoul's hopeless, confused eyes following her every move. Christine hastily swallowed her coffee, then picked up a muffin and began buttering it.

"Of course." Erik vanished into her room: his voice floated out, laced through with amusement as if at some joke he didn't choose to share. "The chandelier shall soon be mended, performances have already begun once more, and La Carlotta severed her contract three days ago. We don't want the managers to forget the talent right under their noses." He emerged with her cloak over one arm, and tossed it over the chair next to her, before going down on one knee next to her, voice dropping to a vibrant, glorious whisper. "It is time for you to recover from your 'illness', and return in triumph."

* * *

_Alas for vanity! I was not, as I'd half-expected, the focus of Opera gossip when I returned. The ballet 'rats' had other matters to babble about. Mme. Giry had been reinstated, so little Cecile Jammes told me importantly, but -- glancing around to be certain Meg did not hear -- only because her replacement died in the chandelier crash. (The Phantom's doing, all agreed. I caught myself wondering if Erik u had /u done it, and suppressed the thought instantly.) As for Carlotta, La Sorelli made a point of telling me that the managers even now sought a replacement for the diva, for Carlotta refused to ever return to the stage where she had known such humiliation. I managed a polite smile and said nothing._

_Naturally, there were other minor points of talk -- who had done this, who had said that, who had returned to the Opera the day after the chandelier disaster and who had not been seen since. But the center around which all gossip swirled was the Phantom. I could not escape it. What had Carlotta done to so extravagantly incur his displeasure? Or was it all the fault of the new managers, for firing Mme. Giry in the first place, and daring to sit in Box Five? Perhaps the chandelier was simply old and its chains rusty, and had fallen of its own accord -- but the girl who suggested that was immediately shouted down._

_No one noted -- or at least, no one commented on -- my disappearance. They all seemed to believe I'd fled when the chandelier fell, like everyone else backstage, and been ill with shock or some such ever since. No one asked me where I'd been, or where I'd gotten the gold ring I wore._

_Well. Almost no one.

* * *

_

"Mademoiselle Daae. Might I have a word with you."

Jeanne froze comically still, as if she thought that distinctively accented voice from behind them might belong to the Phantom himself. Christine herself took a deep breath and let it out once more. They had just left rehearsal (Faust again, as if the managers wanted to spit in the eye of the Phantom), and she had hardly expected to be accosted by anyone at all, let alone --

"Mademoiselle?" The Persian actually sounded as if he were asking her, this time, rather than demanding.

Christine forced a small smile and nodded to Jeanne. "I'll see you later tonight," she said.

Jeanne nodded gratefully, and fled on down the hall with scarcely a backward glance. Christine watched her go, then said, "Monsieur?"

A pointed hesitation, as if waiting for her to turn around and face him. Christine obstinately remained where she was, facing away. At last he cleared his throat and said, "I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, but I have been given to understand you were missing for two weeks."

"I was ill."

"You were not ill, mademoiselle." Politely spoken, but quite firm.

"Then I was not ill, as you please." Christine searched her memory for what whispers she'd heard about the Persian. Forever turning up here and there, writing little notes to himself in a small notebook which no one else had ever managed to read…supposed to know the Opera Ghost, but what backstage tale did not wind its way back to the Phantom sooner or later? She turned to face the Persian at last. "Why do you ask, monsieur?"

"Because I wish you well," he said softly, stepping closer, as if he wished to avoid anyone overhearing their conference. He had dark eyes as sharp as Erik's golden glance, that seemed to pin her in place. "I know you were with him."

Christine's breath caught in her throat. He knows. No, absurd, he could not know. Except that, if he meant only that she had spent her time with some more ordinary lover, surely he would have named the man. "With whom?" she managed.

"I know him, mademoiselle," the Persian said, as if he hadn't heard her, or brushed aside her weak protest. "He is not an angel of music, I swear to you, nor an angel of anything at all…except perhaps death. He considers himself no longer human, if he ever were. He is not bound by our human laws. Whatever promises he has made to you, you cannot trust him."

"Why not?" Now she wished she had stepped aside, or allowed the Persian to draw her into some more private spot than this far-too-public hallway. She lowered her voice as well. "I thank you for your warning, monsieur, but he has not harmed me --" not in ways that you would understand, or that I would explain to a stranger, no matter how much he claims to know Erik! "--indeed, he has sworn never to harm me, and I believe him even if you would not."

"Did he not kidnap you?" the Persian reminded her in a sharp whisper. "What of Joseph Buquet, mademoiselle, or do you truly think the man committed suicide? What of the chandelier that so opportunely dropped on the head of the woman who replaced Madame Giry?"

"Can you be certain it was not suicide? Why do you believe he did those things?" Christine could still hear the terrible shout that had rung in her ears when she had ripped his mask from his face. But these were not crimes of passion that the Persian described. How many of those tales about the Phantom were true? What else had he done besides deceiving a brainless dreamer of a chorus girl? "Is it so impossible he should act honorably to me? Even given the…circumstances…" His face, she had been going to say, but caught herself in time. One takes what rendezvous one can get.

The Persian reached out and raised her chin with one finger, examining her face with those bright, searching eyes. Christine endured it, hands tense in her skirts, and at last he stepped back and released her. His gaze dropped to her hand and lingered there for a moment, then his shoulders rose and fell on a long breath. "You risk everything on such faith, Mademoiselle Daae," he said soberly. "But I cannot say you are wrong to do so. Au revoir." He bowed to her, and walked away.

Christine watched him out of sight, trembling with emotion. She must get away from here. She must stop and consider. It was one thing for Raoul to spout wild accusations of monsters and death's heads, and another for a man, a stranger, to approach her in calm consideration and tell her -- tell her -- she must talk to Erik, if she could but think of a way to broach the subject without provoking his temper, but first she must sit and think and be quiet for twenty minutes together.

She turned to go, and nearly walked into the subject of her thoughts.

He was wrapped in his dark cloak, dark mask covering his face, all but invisible in the long shadows the gas-lamp cast. Anyone passing could see her, however, she reminded herself. She had somehow escaped the lash of gossip so far: she must not go out of her way to court it, which meant no public conversations of an intensely private nature while in a public corridor. She lowered her eyes. "I beg your pardon, monsieur--"

"Do you?"

The question hung in the air, as if the walls themselves had spoken it. Did she what, Christine wondered frantically. Did she beg his pardon? Did she believe he was responsible for the death of Buquet or that woman? Did she trust him? Did she believe him the monster the Persian had implied? She remembered the demon's face in her dreams, and shivered despite herself. "I remember Joseph Buquet telling tales," she said, choosing her words with care.

Erik made an impatient gesture. "The man didn't have the sense to leave off exploring when clearly warned to do so. It is not my fault he died."

"And the chandelier?"

"The chandelier." Erik chuckled suddenly, an ugly sound that tightened the knots in her belly. "Of course the chandelier fell, Christine. It was a very old chandelier, and badly worn. Carlotta's singing must have set it on edge once too often." He reached up and, as if in deliberate, mocking echo of the Persian, slid his fingers beneath her chin as if to tilt her head up, then followed the line of her throat down to the hollow, the backs of his fingers cool against her suddenly heated skin. "I must go -- my Don Juan waits." He stepped backward, and apparently vanished into the shadows. When Christine whispered his name, there was no answer.

* * *

_I had not realized._

_The words look silly and naïve as I write them. I knew from my own experience how little Erik cared for the rules of society; I had heard the stories of the Phantom, which included more than one name who had, supposedly, vanished into his clutches. But even though I myself had identified Erik, in those first moments after I stepped through the mirror, as the Phantom, two weeks of constant contact had dulled that first impression. Towards me, except on that one occasion, he had always been courteous and gentlemanly, more so even than my behavior invited. I had thought him manipulative, even cruel…but not a murderer._

_Mistake me not, I believed him on the subject of Joseph Buquet. The man had so enjoyed the attention he'd received for his tale of encountering Erik somewhere in the cellars; I could, all too easily, imagine him exploring too far, and falling into one of the traps surrounding the house beyond the lake. But the chandelier? Only one person had been killed outright, according to the papers, but dozens had been hurt in the crash, and dozens more in the crush of the ensuing panic. Erik's laugh still rang in my ears, and I could not but remember that the one fatality had -- by sheer convenient coincidence, of course! -- been the replacement for Mme. Giry._

_It helped clear my mind a little, at least. Now I rejoiced that I had told Raoul so little of my 'Angel of Music'. The less he knew, the safer he was. Erik would not harm me. I had only to keep Raoul away from Erik, from the very subject of my Angel, even away from me if possible, though I doubted the last._

_Alas for fine intentions! Raoul was not so easily governed.

* * *

_

"Mademoiselle Daae."

"Monsieur le Vicomte." She had used this short-cut once too often, apparently -- or else one of the 'rats' had told Raoul where to find her. Christine stopped and folded her hands in front of her.

Raoul bowed slightly. "I understood that you were leaving the Opera." His tone made it half a question.

"La Carlotta left, and the management asked me to take her place. I could not in good conscience abandon them." Let that be the end of this conversation, she prayed. Let him not ask anything more --

"Then your 'Angel' has let you go free?"

-- damn you, Raoul de Chagny. Christine turned on her heel and walked down to the hall to a small rehearsal room, not caring if Raoul followed her or not. Once inside the room, she turned and watched him close the door behind them. "My Angel is not your concern, monsieur le Vicomte," she said flatly.

"Everything about you is my concern," Raoul said, folding his arms over his chest. "Do you realize in how much danger you are?"

Less than you are, dear Raoul. But she could not say that, not without having to explain far more about Erik than would be safe for either of them. "Don't be ridiculous," she said instead. "I'm in a public place, surrounded by friends--"

"Not that kind of danger. Not yet." Raoul took two quick steps toward her, his arms falling to his sides. "Christine -- I tried to tell you before. I believe that your Angel is no angel, but an imposter, someone who wants to take advantage of you."

Oh, is he. You are several weeks behind the news, Raoul. "If he has, that is my concern," Christine said, keeping her voice even with an effort. "I am sorry, and I appreciate your concern, but the only man with the right to so fret over my well-being would be my husband, and I doubt I shall ever marry." She gestured to the door, hoping he'd take the hint and leave her be. "Please, Raoul." He didn't move. "If you will excuse me?"

He crossed the distance between them with three strides and caught up her right hand. "If you will 'never marry,' mademoiselle, why are you wearing a wedding ring?"

"Wedding rings are worn on the left hand, not the right--"

"Somebody had to give you this ring, Christine," Raoul persisted, his grip tightening painfully on her hand. "What promises did you give him in return?"

"Raoul--"

Raoul let go of her hand, as if realizing what he was doing. "I don't want to see your trust abused by this…'Angel of Music'."

Christine sighed and shook her head. "There is no Angel of Music, Raoul."

She'd intended to reassure him, just a little, that she was not such a fool as he seemed to think her. Instead, he stiffened and looked down at her with narrowed eyes. "If you know it's a deception, why did you follow the voice?"

"…I beg your pardon?"

"In your dressing room, the night of the masquerade," Raoul said impatiently, turning on his heel to pace around the room. "A voice, coming from…the wall, another dressing room next door, I don't know -- lured you out of the room. It wasn't the Angel of Music, but you followed it as if it were an angel, a devil, witchcraft, I don't know…why did you follow the voice if you knew it wasn't an angel?"

Christine looked away, twisting at the ring. I followed Erik because…because… "I told you, Monsieur le Vicomte, my actions are my own business," she bit out. "I might ask why you condemn a man you've never met, and about whom you know nothing!"

"Because he's tricked you," Raoul retorted, words coming just as sharply, as he spun on his heel to face her. "Because he lied to you, and manipulated you. For God's sake, Christine, because he put his ring on your finger and heard promises from your lips that I would die to hear! Who is he?"

Christine folded her arms over her chest and bit her tongue.

The silence lasted too long. At last, Raoul shook his head. "His name is Erik," he said quietly.

"What?" Christine's hands tightened on her arms. "Why do you think so?" Had the Persian told him? How dared he!

"You told me so yourself." Raoul went back to his pacing. "You came into your dressing room after the masquerade, and you murmured, 'Poor Erik.'"

"You were listening outside my door again?" She was trembling, Christine noticed distantly, fine tremors that shook her down to the core. She'd wanted him never to know. She'd wanted to keep them apart. How was she to keep Raoul safe if the man persisted in listening at her door like a naughty child?

"No, I, er…" Raoul hesitated. "I was hiding in your inner dressing room." It came out in a muffled rush.

"In my --" How dared he. How dared he. He might have ruined what fragile reputation she had, and gotten himself killed into the bargain -- she could not doubt that Erik would have killed him, if he'd attempted to follow them through the mirror. How much had he seen? How much did he know? "Do you want to be killed?"

"Perhaps."

No. Not if she could help it. Mary mother of God, that she should have to be sensible for both of them! "Raoul, please, promise me -- forget what you heard. And never visit me again, especially in my dressing room, unless...unless I invite you."

Raoul shook his head thoughtfully, looking at her with wide puppy-dog eyes. "Will you invite me, then?"

"Yes, yes, of course!" What did he think he was doing? This was no time for games! "Only swear!"

"I swear on my honor as a de Chagny." He crossed the room to her, took her ringless left hand, and kissed it. "Until tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Christine agreed after a moment's hesitation. Forgive me, Erik.


	9. In which placating promises are made

CHAPTER EIGHT

(In which our heroine makes promises she does not intend to keep)

_Mme. Valerius scolded me that evening. Why did I frown so, she wanted to know. Did I want wrinkles before my time? She shook her head over the foolishness of girls today, and picked up my right hand in hers: how could I be frowning when I wore that? What pretty words had I allowed to turn my head? She winked as she said it, but that did not lessen my blush. Fortunately, she took that for answer enough, and patted me on the cheek, and assured me she wouldn't persist after my secrets: she too had been young once._

_I blushed even more. She had met Raoul, and surely thought it his. I could not explain otherwise without giving her the explanation I had once written out for her, and adding to it more details that would hardly reflect to my credit. So, like a craven, I kept silent._

_Raoul himself never mentioned the ring again. He did not need to, after all: he had achieved at least part of his desire. Only part: I would not meet him outside the Opera -- let this take place under Erik's gaze, I told myself defiantly. He would see I had nothing to hide._

* * *

"An expedition to the North Pole," Christine said thoughtfully. "It sounds…thrilling."

"It sounds cold," Raoul corrected her (which had, in fact, been her first thought, but she had bit her tongue on it). "Phillipe swears he'll buy out all the wool in Paris if it will protect me from the northern chill."

"Mmm." The last time she'd seen Phillipe de Chagny, only a few days ago, he'd given her a glare cold as the aforementioned north, and stalked off the other direction as if she were a particularly repulsive insect he didn't care to take the time to step on. She doubted that Raoul would care to hear that trifling detail. "Since it's to make your reputation, I shouldn't complain so much if I were you."

"But you are not I," Raoul said, smiling at her fondly. He hesitated a moment, and pushed himself to his feet, smile fading. "And my reputation may be made sooner than I should like."

"Indeed? Do you have some plans for bold derring-do, saving the life of your commander--"

"The departure has been moved up. I leave in three weeks, a month at most."

"…a month." Four weeks. Only four weeks left of this equivocating dance, praying that Raoul would not force her to make a choice, praying that Erik would not demand his granted right of courtship, not yet. A month of somehow preventing Raoul from asking for an explanation she did not know how to give him.

"No more," Raoul agreed, misunderstanding her. He leaned forward, eyes intent on her face. "Please, Christine -- I go, perhaps, to my death. Will you not at least promise to wait for me?"

"I cannot." Too stark. Christine looked away from Raoul, looked down, to catch herself twisting Erik's ring around her finger. She angrily jerked her hands apart. She'd made no promises to Erik. "We cannot marry, Raoul. You know it as well as I do."

"And why not?"

"Because you are the Vicomte de Chagny, heir to the Comte de Chagny, who neither likes nor approves of me -- and I am an Opera singer with no family, no connections, nothing except my face and voice to recommend me, and little enough that would prove!"

"There are ways--"

"Raoul."

Silence, but Raoul glowered at her still. He loved her, Christine reminded herself sharply. He loved her, and she…well, she was fond of him. I loved you once. Yes, and nothing ever came of it. I cannot make you promises, and you will be satisfied with nothing less! If she could not even give him a proper explanation -- but wait. A month, he'd said. "We have a month," she said slowly.

"Perhaps no more than three weeks," Raoul said, sounding rather sulky and not at all like a grown man. "Christine--"

"Three weeks or four, I don't care. Raoul, listen." Promise me you will not ask why I do this, or what I seek to accomplish. No -- he must not think of Erik. "For four weeks, we can be…" Be what? Not his mistress, not his wife, and he'd already proven doggedly resistant to accepting simple friendship. "We can be secretly engaged."

"And then wed at the end?"

"No, I told you, we can never marry." Hadn't Raoul courted her, once, not very long ago? Sent her pretty posies and said sweet things? That was when he believed he competed for my heart with nothing more significant than my devotion to my career, she reminded herself bleakly, when even I thought I had nothing to hide. She leaned forward and took both Raoul's hands in hers, lowering her voice to a coaxing murmur. "But we can have a secret betrothal, just for this month, until you leave. Nobody else will know. No one else needs to know. Nobody can disapprove, that way. Nobody will be hurt." Especially not Erik. Just three weeks, keeping Raoul occupied with this game. Perhaps four. Erik had said he would be busy, composing.

But not for how long. There is no Angel of Music to carry your prayers to God, Christine: have you chosen to throw dice with Fate instead?

If her smile faltered at that thought, Raoul did not notice. His face lit up, and he fell to one knee, kissing the backs of both her hands. "Christine -- my dearest Mademoiselle Daae, I have the honor to ask for your hand in betrothal."

"You already have both my hands," Christine pointed out, smile returning. "I can scarcely refuse."

Raoul rose to his feet again. He still had not let go of her hands. "Fairest of all women, you fill my heart with joy."

"Oh, hush. You'll turn my head with such flattery."

"You should hear nothing but such praises all day, my dearest mademoiselle."

Perhaps this would not be a disaster after all. When Raoul set his mind to it, he could be so very sweet.

* * *

_It lasted a week._

_I wrote Raoul notes full of extravagant protestations, and received even more extravagant vows from him in return. He swept me into a dance down a deserted corridor, our self-provided music rent with breathless laughter. We told each other a thousand fairy tales, and became the hero and heroine of all of them. I could not but remember my girlhood love of such a courtly, charming, handsome gentleman._

_But all the pretty stories and shy glances could not fill the looming silence. Raoul paid me many a fine compliment, but always on my hair or my dress or my way of walking, never on my voice or my singing -- this despite the fact that I left him each evening to perform Marguerite on the stage. I, in turn, recalled aloud my father's tales and legends, but only in patchwork fragments that never glanced at the Angel of Music. Neither of us spoke of any future more distant than the next hour or the following day._

_I did not, then, think of any similarity to my time with Erik. But I thought of Erik as little as possible. He might have reminded me what I did not wish to know: that love may not be played like a children's game, not unless you are prepared to lose._

* * *

He was not standing outside the rehearsal hall, tapping his hat against his thigh impatiently. Nor was he in her dressing room, pacing back and forth as if impatient to be moving. Christine frowned down at her table for a moment. Raoul had hardly left her company since he had agreed to their betrothal, unless duty or other such necessity called one of them away. If he were not waiting for her, where might he be?

She found him down a hallway and around a corner, sitting in the same small room in which they had promised each other their month's company. He glanced up as she entered the room, and rose to his feet. "Mademoiselle."

"Raoul," Christine said, now twice as confused. Propriety, after a week of 'my dearest Christine'? "I didn't see you after rehearsal, so I came looking for you. Are you well?"

"Yes. Yes, I am well. I thought…that perhaps we should be less obvious." This delivered to the floor somewhere between them rather than to Christine.

Less obvious? They'd been so careful, at Christine's own behest, that even Meg only watched her with curious eyes and didn't accuse her of holding secrets. She walked over and took his hands in both hers. "Did your brother--"

"No, Phillipe doesn't know." This was unlikely to be true, but Christine did not care to contradict Raoul, so he continued, all in a rush. "It was -- a gentleman all in pale purple came up to me, while you were in rehearsal, and said he was rather envious, because I'd captured you before he'd had his chance. And winked at me."

The Gentleman in Lavender! Christine hadn't thought him so observant. Or I am far less subtle than I thought. "Ah," was all she said aloud, then, carefully light-hearted, "Well, I do not regret missing the opportunity to have a rather mediocre poem dedicated to my honor." She hesitated, trying to study Raoul's downturned face. "You did not take offense, surely?"

"At what?" He did look up now, color high. "At a compliment for something I have not actually done?"

Oh, no. No. What madness possessed him now? He did not think to -- "We are betrothed," Christine said, the words coming out far more uncertain than she meant them. You were satisfied, do not press for more, let this be what it is!

"A secret engagement that you won't let become anything more!" Raoul said furiously, shattering her hopes before they were properly formed. "Christine, I cannot do this any more."

"Raoul --" She could hardly breathe, now.

"I won't go to the North Pole. Not until things are settled."

"Raoul, you've promised." She must breathe. The root of all projection was in your breathing. This strangled voice would not persuade anyone.

"No." He let go of her hands, and met her eyes properly for the first time that afternoon. "I shall not leave Paris, not like this with my tail tucked between my legs."

Then you shall not stay in it with my company! But terror and fury still clogged her throat, so all she could successfully manage was a hoarse, gutteral, "Out."

Raoul bowed and left.

* * *

_I had not expected it._

_I sit and stare at those four words, and feel my face burn with old mortification. I should have expected it. Raoul had never been satisfied with half-measures, never settled for less than his own way. He'd listened to me little enough when I told him to go away and leave me be, back when I was still the virginal devotee of the Angel of Music and had not yet glimpsed the darkness of the lowest cellars of the Opera; now, with reason to hope he might win me entirely, and perhaps some continuing curiosity about the soi-disant 'Angel of Music', he would not give up for anything less than a bullet to his heart._

_These are the reflections of a much later time, of course. Then, I could only sit and stare at my closed door, fighting back unreasonable tears. My plans threatened to shred apart in my hands, and I did not know how to mend them. I wrote a hasty note to the managers, pleading illness, and went home in my turn…back to the boarding-house apartment I shared with Mme. Valerius._

* * *

"Sacre Dieu, my child, you're so pale! Is something wrong? Has tonight's performance been canceled? Heaven forfend that the Phantom--"

"No, Mama," Christine said wearily. "There's been no disaster. I felt tired and ill, and asked for a night off to rest." Her stomach clenched on the lie. It wasn't far from the truth, she reassured herself, and Madame Valerius would never ask why she felt ill. But that did not make her feel better.

Madame Valerius reached up and cupped Christine's face in both her hands, looking her over with a small frown of concentration. "Ill -- well, I should think so," she said sternly. "I might have known. Look at you, you're pale as a corpse!"

Your hand is as chill as a corpse! Meg's voice, half laughing and half worried, echoed in Christine's memory. She forced a smile. "Not so ill as that. I do want to rest by myself for a while, Mama. If anyone should call for me, please don't let them in."

Madame Valerius tched her tongue, but released Christine with a final pat to her cheeks. "Of course not. You want your rest." She turned to go, then hesitated. "No one? Not even your Monsieur de Chagny?" She glanced down at Christine's hand, forehead wrinkled in a silent question. "Or -- well, monsieur asked after you when you were with the Angel--"

"Yes, he mentioned." Surely Raoul wouldn't come here, would he? He would ask questions, and dare her to turn him away this time. That would force still more explanations, explanations she had little stomach to give, no matter what letters she had written on a masquerade night. "Not even the Vicomte," she said after a moment's pause to firm her nerve. "He must understand. If he comes, tell him -- tell him I have gone away, whatever you must to convince him to go away again."

"Yes, dear. I'll go fix you some hot chocolate, then." With a firm nod, as if to herself, Madame Valerius vanished into the next room.

Christine retreated to her own room. Hot chocolate, and enough peace and quiet to think. It would have to be enough.

* * *

_Hot chocolate I had, in plenty -- a lead singer commanded rather more in the way of salary than a chorus girl, so I could afford such small luxuries, and Mme. Valerius with me. Peace and quiet I had too, for the truth about the next day and a half is this: I spent them alone, doing nothing._

_Raoul, I believe, thought me back in the arms of my soi-disant 'Angel'. I did not dare think what Erik might know of my movements. I could not continue as I was going, but spent the hours pummeling my brain and coming out with no better solution. I liked Raoul well enough, but to marry him? To defy his brother and all Parisian high society for his sake? To give up my music?_

_What about Erik? Suppose Raoul did find out the truth about Erik; what would happen then? Violence, even death. I truly had_ _stepped into an opera, I told myself bitterly; I had best find a way to step out again, or we should all end in ruin. But no great revelations came to me, though I lay in bed for hours and stared at my ceiling (and traced an eagle, a rabbit, and a large cat in the cracks of its plaster, should you care to know)._

_So I returned to the Opera once more. As Erik had told me, it would hardly be prudent for the diva to allow her audience to forget._

* * *

"Your upper register must be stronger, Christine. Have you been neglecting your practice?"

"No, Angel, I go to rehearsal --" She caught herself before she could finish the familiar defense. There was no Angel of Music, after all. "Erik?"

"Christine."

"Have you, er, been waiting long?" He must be standing behind her tall mirror. At least she didn't see him anywhere within her dressing room, where he might have taken a seat. And been seen by your dresser and perhaps a curious ballet rat or two!

"No."

At least he was not lecturing her about the necessity of rehearsal. Christine caught herself reaching for a curl to twist around her finger, and clasped her hands firmly in her lap. Say something, she told herself. She had been able to talk to him for hours on end, during the weeks they had spent alone beyond the lake. But her head felt stuffed full of equal parts Faust and the charming nonsense she chattered at Raoul. Had chattered. "Have you…does your Don Juan progress well?"

"Well enough. Has de Chagny treated you well?"

Her face burned, as if a hot fist had clenched at her heart. Well enough, she wanted to say, or please, you must understand, but the words would not emerge. It was not meant for you to watch! As if he had not seen so much else of her, heart and body and soul together…

A sibulant sigh whispered from behind the mirror. "You need not fear me, Christine. As long as you wear my ring and keep your promise, you and yours are safe within these walls."

We are safe. In her lap, Christine closed her left hand around the fingers of her right, fiddling with the ring. It turned so easily on her finger, as if it would slip off with a gesture. But she was wearing it. She could do anything, talk to anyone. She could tell Raoul the whole history, as she'd meant to do so often. If she wanted to.

…why was Erik behind the mirror? Why did he not come in? No one was here except herself, and she wanted to meet his eyes. This was no mean gift he gave, and a 'thank you' through a mirror was poor repayment indeed. She wanted to see Erik, wanted with an abrupt, childish intensity that startled her. She opened her mouth to admit to some small part of this, to at least attempt to thank him, but the words would not come.

"Your scales, Christine." Erik spoke with the gently commanding tones of her teacher.

Christine took a deep breath, sat up, and began the scales.

* * *

_I threw myself into the role of Marguerite that night. Safety lay in those soaring notes; all the passion in the world, contained and controlled within the boundaries of my voice. For that brief while, I could forget my sore confusion, and believe an answer to my predicament existed that would not lead to death, despair and destruction._

_I sorely needed that safe harbor. Every moment I was on stage, I felt the prickling along the nape of one's neck that means one is being watched -- closely observed, most particularly. Even in front of an audience where one expects all eyes to be upon on, it's an unexpected, and uncomfortable, sensation._

_Did I know who watched me? Not for certain. But every time I glanced at the de Chagny box, Raoul's eyes were fixed on the chandelier, on the floor, anywhere but on the stage. I did not look at Box Five at all._

* * *

She curtsied once more, eyes lowered, then slipped back through the curtain a stagehand held open for her. The roar of the crowd rang in her ears, or perhaps that was simply her ears ringing. At least this time she kept her feet and didn't require someone's help merely to reach her dressing room.

…all Paris at your feet…

I have given you my soul, and exhausted myself.

No! Think only of here and now, she told herself fiercely. One step after another. Dressing room, change, and then home. Perhaps she could persuade Mama Valerius to make her another cup of hot chocolate.

She reached the wings, only to find herself --

"Mademoiselle!"

"Mademoiselle Daae! Another --"

"--sheerest artistry, mademoiselle!"

-- surrounded and besieged. Christine fixed a smile to her face, and wished she dared simply push her way through the crowd like a cross child. She managed some slow movement forward, but now that she had been noticed, there was no escape.

"We are all astounded --"

"Please, mademoiselle, accept this tribute--" A piece of paper pressed into her hands. Mary mother of saints, that was the Gentleman in Lavender! Not deterred by Raoul after all, it seemed.

"--honor of such beauty--" A bouquet of flowers, still tied together with its flower-shop bow, was thrust into her arms, such that she must take it or be impaled upon the blooms.

"--voice, mademoiselle, as if you spoke with the angels of heaven!"

Christine kept her smile, and occasionally said, "Thank you," whenever someone paused for breath. She was making little headway against the press of her admirers, and her skin still prickled as if someone particularly watched her. She glanced around, making every effort so it might seem thoughtless and casual, and saw the Persian, off at the edge of the sea of people. It explained the prickling of her skin, but did not greatly aid her otherwise: her stomach twisted sourly on the notion that he might be watching her because of Erik.

"Christine!"

Raoul! Aloud she said, "Monsieur le vicomte," and could not help but smile more truly for a moment.

"Mademoiselle Daae."

Her smile froze again. "Monsieur le comte." She hadn't seen Phillipe, standing in his brother's shadow. "It is a pleasure."

"As you say."

Raoul glared at his brother, then took Christine's arm as if they had not argued the last time they spoke. "Christine, please --"

"I know." They must talk. But not here, and how they were to attain even the relative privacy of her dressing room Christine could not imagine, not in this press. She craned her neck to peer down the hall that led there.

"Allow me," Raoul said, as if she had spoken. He tightened his grip on her arm, then began to push forward. "Here, now -- excuse me, monsieur -- pardon, madame -- my apologies, monsieur --"

Christine permitted herself to be towed along, smiling graciously where she could and ignoring the hissing whispers already beginning in their wake, until they reached her dressing room. Her dresser sat dozing outside the door. With a glance, Christine kept Raoul silent as she opened the door.

Once inside, Raoul let her go, and stepped back a pace, folding both hands behind him. "Chris -- Mademoiselle Daae. I beg that you will forgive me for what I said two days ago. I spoke in bad temper, and -- I didn't mean it, please, Christine, I u will /u go to the North Pole --"

"Yes, of course," Christine said, leaning back against the door. The quiet here did not help her as much as she'd hoped; her knees still felt weak, and she could not catch her breath. Worse, she still felt that horrible certainty of being watched. "Of course I forgive you, Raoul." The Persian could not see in here, nor could Phillipe de Chagny. Which meant…

"Christine?" Raoul did not step forward again, she saw when she opened her eyes again, but his hands had tightened on themselves as if he were holding himself back from doing so. "I know…I know that I forfeited the right to ask you what happened these past two days, but if this…'Angel' did something--"

"No!" Oh, that would be the stuff of opera indeed, for Raoul to protect her from something that hadn't occurred! "No, he did nothing." Not then. Not ever. Not even when invited. Ah, God, she must not think that, not when Erik might be here and listening to every word. "Raoul, we shouldn't -- we must --"

"I must go," Raoul said, completing her sentence before she could. He held out his hand, and kissed hers when offered it, but hesitated at the door. "Will I see you again?"

"Tomorrow," Christine said, as reassuringly as she might with her head still aspin. "I sang --" She sighed and closed the door behind him. I didn't sing for you, Raoul. I sang for him, if I sang for anyone.

She sat down at her dressing table, and looked up at the reflection of her long mirror. "Erik?"

No answer. Her skin prickled.

Even more quietly, "Mon ange?"

No answer. The door opened abruptly, and her dresser bustled in. "I beg your pardon, mademoiselle," she said. "It wasn't until the gentleman left that I realized…well, then, up with you!"

Christine rose to her feet and allowed the woman to help her off with her costume. If she noticed the tears on Christine's face, she did not speak of them.


	10. In which good intentions go badly awry

CHAPTER NINE

(in which our heroine forgets with what the road to hell is paved)

* * *

_Unromantic though it is to admit, I slept quite soundly that night. It would have been more suitable to have lain awake, or paced the floor, in anguish over my Angel and my vicomte. But I had had my belly full of lying awake and chasing myself in circles: I had done little else for the past two days. In any case, the events of the evening had left me spent. I do not recall so much as dreaming._

_The problem did not, alas, conveniently go away whilst I slept. It did not even shrink to a manageable size. I believed Raoul when he promised to go on his expedition, just as I believed Erik when he swore he would not harm me or mine so long as I wore his ring. But where once I had believed I could keep them apart for a month, now three weeks stretched before me as an impossible eternity._

_It was no very flattering realization. A man may act as he pleases, but when he has sworn his heart and his hand to a lady, that lady likes to feel that he is truly hers, not merely hers until he sets his mind to some other accomplishment. Raoul worried me, and Erik terrified me -- Erik, who came and went so erratically: Erik, who might or might not know much that I did not want him to know. And so I went to the Opera, to pace, to practice, and to clear my head. Naturally, I accomplished only one of these._

_

* * *

_

"Mademoiselle Daae! Christine!"

Christine blinked and sat up quickly -- she'd been half-lying on a divan tucked into a corner of one of the Opera's hallways, wrapped in the same gloomy thoughts as always. "Meg! Good heavens, you startled me."

Meg blushed and folded her hands together, glancing around at the other ballet girls with her as if to gather courage. "We didn't mean to -- but we saw you here, and we wanted to congratulate the new diva."

A murmur of agreement came from the other girls, and Christine felt the pressure of a dozen anxious, hopeful stares. She couldn't help but chuckle. "Thank you. But I don't require grand congratulations. Are you on your way somewhere? Please, sit down."

A rustle from the group of rats, and someone near the back murmured, "La Carlotta would've--"

"She's not Carlotta," Sorelli said firmly, stepping out from behind Meg to seat herself on the couch next to Christine.

"No, she isn't," another of the girls agreed, perching on the arm of the divan-- the girls were finding seats, either on the divan somewhere or on the floor, like a collection of birds. "Did you see her in the audience last night?"

Christine frowned to herself. She could not recall that she had, ironically. She had had other things to preoccupy her mind while on stage.

"Did you see that diamond necklace she was wearing?" Sorelli said, apparently not noticing Christine's frown, or ignoring it. "Splendid as our new chandelier. I had not expected her to find a new protector already, nor one so generous."

"No, it's her old one, Maman says," Meg volunteered from where she sat by Christine's feet. "The necklace is to 'console' her for the frog."

"Or perhaps he's congratulating her for not trying to sing any more!"

"Cecile." Sorelli frowned at the girl in question, who subsided. Then she looked back at Christine. "I understand Carlotta is not the only one who may claim a generous protector…or perhaps, more than a protector?"

Raoul de Chagny is not my lover -- dear heaven, how often had she said that? But these were Opera girls, with every reason to believe…pah. She'd spent an entire week guarding herself as sternly as a priest, and thrown it all away for five minutes in her dressing room that had resolved nothing. Christine looked down at her hands, realized she was twisting at Erik's ring again, and made herself stop.

"Would your Phillipe allow it?" Meg asked uneasily, looking up at Sorelli.

Sorrelli didn't answer, only laid one hand over Christine's, as if to conceal the gold ring. "Has the Vicomte proposed?"

Promise to wait for me-- But no. He hadn't said the words. She hadn't permitted it. A secret engagement you won't let become anything else! "Does it matter?" Christine said, startled at the resignation quiet in her own voice. "A singer at the Opera, even the diva, cannot marry a nobleman."

"I'd marry a nobleman if he asked me --"

"Nobody has asked you, so be quiet!"

"Maman says I'm going to marry the Emperor himself."

"And you believed her, Meg?"

Sorelli looked down at Christine's hands, half-hidden under hers, and nodded once. "Good," she said, with a gentle squeeze of her hand, while the ballet girls chattered around them. "The Opera needs a proper diva. If you ran away with young de Chagny--"

"I should lose my position, and he would be disowned. I know." She had seen it in Phillipe de Chagny's face the night before. Even if she had not, she could see the knowledge, cold and cruel, narrowing Sorelli's lips and darkening her eyes. Sorelli, the mistress of Phillipe de Chagny. Who better would know what the Comte thought of the matter? 'Phillipe doesn't know', oh, Raoul…

Sorelli looked away in her turn, withdrawing her hand from Christine's. "I understand how it can be to love a nobleman," she said, without any of the archness or coy sophistication she usually affected. "But for us, this is only a way to earn our bread. You love singing; we can all hear it. It would be a crime to Heaven for you to give it up."

"I will not," Christine said. Even if she did wed Raoul, surely she could still sing. Didn't the nobility hold musicales and other such small exhibitions of talent?

Erik would not hold you to half-measures thus. Erik would encourage you -- he wants your success, Christine Daae, and will barter his own power against it. Think on that before you make any grand plans.

The conversation had turned to lighter things -- gossip about Carlotta, about Sorelli (who defended herself, laughing), about the various suitors of the 'rats' themselves, who traded themselves about quite faithlessly. Christine excused herself as soon as she dared, and walked down the hall as if she had an appointment elsewhere to keep. There might be safety in numbers, but she was in no mood for safety this morning.

She wondered if she could find tea, somewhere in the Opera.

* * *

_The Opera -- oh, how could I ever describe the Opera Garnier? Not as it may be seen from the outside (which possesses little beauty to recommend itself to a passerby), nor even as an Opera subscriber might still see it for a few francs per month (though at least he will have been inside, and seen the glory of the staircase, the many-pillared hallways and Apollo with his lyre above the proscenium), but as it may only be known by someone who lives there. I turned my mind from the darker secrets that might lie behind the pillars and beneath the trapdoors, the secrets which only Erik might know, and reveled instead in the slighter secrets to be found, the stables and costumes and ridiculous props not used since a single production twenty years ago._

_I had not, precisely, thought of a way to thread my self-built maze of promises. But for a few brief hours, alone in the Opera House, I was entirely happy in a way that could not be matched by the entire week I had spent with Raoul, put together._

* * *

"Christine -- there you are! I've searched everywhere for you!"

"Raoul?" Christine jumped, and looked uncertainly back at the fresco she'd been admiring. She had not thought herself close enough to the Opera stage for anyone to find her at all.

"We were to meet at your dressing room this morning," Raoul said, taking her hand and bowing over it. "I waited for some time, and when you didn't come, I went looking for you." He took her arm, as if he had every right to do so, and began walking down the corridor in the same direction from which he'd come. "I hadn't realized how large the Opera House is, to be honest. I'd only been to the auditorium for a performance before. Well, and backstage to the dressing rooms."

"Garnier never intended it to be a performance stage only," Christine agreed absently, with a glance back over her shoulder. They were entirely alone, as near as she might determine. What was Raoul thinking? She'd agreed to see him tomorrow, or today rather, not meet him at her dressing room at an appointed time. Did he believe they would take up again as if nothing had happened? "All sorts of people live here -- actually live on the premises, to do caretaking, I suppose."

"Is that what your 'Angel' does?"

Christine looked up sharply at him, but he wasn't looking at her. Did he think to interrogate her? "You must not have wandered very far if you didn't see them," she said, forcing a smile onto her face and into her voice. "Sweet old couples with only a room or two to themselves -- like those people we used to visit when we were children, and beg for fairy tales -- only these aren't farmers, they sew costumes or make certain the ballrooms stay clean year-round." The words came glibly off her tongue, as if she were reciting a set speech.

"Do they live down below?" Raoul paused beside a flight of stairs that led down to another cross-hallway, a few feet down which Christine could just make out an open trapdoor.

Down trapdoors? Did Raoul think she was speaking of spiders? "No. No, of course not." Christine pulled her arm free of Raoul's grasp and descended the staircase to look down into the trapdoor. It led only into darkness, without any sign of the stagehand who must have opened it for whatever purpose. If it was a stagehand, and not someone else --

"Who lives down below?" Raoul said from behind her. "Is that where you go when you pass through your mirror?"

He had given up any pretense of subtlety. It was almost a relief -- or would have been so, had the consequences of answering him not been so great. "Oh, Raoul." It came out as a sigh. She turned to look up at him -- he stood half-way down the stairs, hands half-clenched at his sides. "You should go, go away to the North Pole and forget me."

"I cannot." He took a deep breath, then ventured a step down. "Christine, you must understand--"

"No. Raoul -- Raoul, come with me." It was he who didn't understand, he who must understand. Here was a way out of the labyrinth. She gathered her skirts and climbed the stairs once more, passing Raoul with only a glance.

"Christine? Where are you going?"

To someplace where she might think, naturally. To a place without any associations of Erik, or else her courage would run out through her fingers like hot sand. "To the rooftop," she said, turning at the top of the stairs to look at him. "I'll explain, I promise. I'll tell you all. Come with me."

After a moment, Raoul nodded once and climbed the stairs after her.

* * *

_I do not want to remember._

_But I must._

_I remember standing near the edge of the roof, looking out over the streets of Paris, with Raoul just behind me ready to catch me if I seemed likely to fall, the wind on my face and the sun on my hair…and feeling, not free, but exposed._

_I remember how much I told Raoul: of the voice that at first I had taken for an angel's, of the ordinary parlor with ordinary furniture in the house across the lake, of the man who lived there, neither angel nor ghost. All that he had not known for certain of the events of the night of the chandelier disaster, I described to him in the minutest detail._

_I remember how much was not said, as well. I could not admit, even to Raoul -- especially to Raoul -- how deeply I had loved my unseen Angel. Certainly I did not confess to my tentative, ignorant attempts at seduction. I remember the long pauses as I struggled to find words, and the ache in my middle when I looked into Raoul's blank, intent face. All the sweet words and courtly manners in the world could not fill these silences between us, not when he did not understand this darkness at my core where Erik stood._

_I remember finishing my story, and tasting peace for the first time in too many days. I had told Raoul all. Now, surely --_

_I cannot remember what I thought would happen next, only that I expected my words to unlock the door to some simpler world. I was a fool. Happily ever after does not come so cheaply -- and I was not, after all, alone on the rooftop._

* * *

"We must -- Christine, I can have my horses ready in twenty minutes, can you have your things packed by then?"

Christine stared up at Raoul. "What are you talking about?"

"This is no time for niceties. We must leave at once, you said so yourself."

"No! No, I -- I can't." Sweet Mary mother of saints, what had she said to make him believe this? She remembered nothing. "I must sing for him tonight," she said abruptly, grasping the first thing that sprang to mind. "I promised."

"Break it."

If she had not already realized she could not, must not marry Raoul, that would have sealed the question. "I shall not break my word, monsieur," she said coldly, turning away from him to pace along the rooftop. "Would you truly have me that cruel? He deserves that much -- to hear, for one last time," and many times thereafter, since she would not run away so, where had Raoul gotten such a notion? "the voice he taught?"

Raoul grimaced down at the statues at the edge of the roof, as if he would have her that cruel, at least to Erik. But he said only, "And after the performance, you'll come?"

"I can't. I don't know. I don't know." She should say no. Why couldn't she simply say no?

"You don't know," Raoul mimicked, voice taking on an exasperated edge. "Good God, Christine, the man is a magician after all. You act like a woman bespelled! If he looked like me, would you care two straws for me?"

"Raoul…" She could almost laugh. "You ask too many questions, my dearest sir." Let him think what he would. He would leave soon, in a matter of a few days. She could be generous in her goodbye. She stepped forward, taking both his hands in hers. "Kiss me."

Raoul's eyes went very wide, and his mouth open and shut before he managed, "Christine?"

"Kiss me, my betrothed of a day -- for the first time and the last."

* * *

_A very good line, I thought, suitably operatic for the occasion. It sounded more impressive than the kiss deserved: a brush of my lips against his, of which I principally remember that his were softer and cooler than I expected. No passion woke between us, no fire, nothing at all to make me reconsider his plea. As he stepped back again, however, a moving shadow caught my eye._

_It was nothing, I told myself, even as a premonitory chill swept through me. A bird returning to its nest, or a piece of cloth caught in the wind. But still I looked up…and saw him leaning against Apollo's Lyre, looking down at us with eyes like fire._

_Perhaps I said his name. I know I reached up as if I could stop him from vanishing, stop him from believing I had broken my promise beyond repair. But the shadow vanished before I could do more than cry out, and I felt Raoul's hand on my arm._

_I guided Raoul to the door back below, and listened in silence to his angry protests that if not for my hand on his arm he would go back and confront the Phantom, that he should take me away right now despite any promises I had made to that thing. I was full of half-formed plans to escape Raoul's company and fly below, to explain to Erik…_

_Then, and only then, I looked down at my hands, and noticed that at some point, Erik's ring had slipped off my finger and vanished._


	11. In which final choices are made

CHAPTER TEN

(in which all masks are removed and all choices made)

_I was not frightened._

_I cannot justify this fact, only state it as plain truth. It was not the momentary peace of spirit I had felt only a few heartbeats before: rather it was a sort of dreadful silence of spirit that I can only compare to the calm that an observer might feel, standing out on an open plain as the clouds thicken and darken overhead, and the growl of thunder approaches -- the moment's silence just before the skies open and the wind lashes all the trees to a frenzy, a silence as if the earth itself held her breath and waited._

_That silence surrounded me as I descended from the roof. Raoul de Chagny? What did he matter? Let him rage as he would: he was not Erik, it could not touch me. I soothed him absently, mouthed the necessary reassurances and promises to get him to leave me alone in my dressing room, and at last sent him off with the certainty I would elope with him after my performance the following day._

_Once he was safely out of earshot, I called Erik by name, at first softly, then louder. No one answered -- not even my dresser bustling in as before. I consoled myself with the uncomfortable knowledge that even if Erik had responded, I did not know what to say to him._

_That must be my first concern, and for that, I needed time and privacy. About the time I could do nothing: matters would come to a head, and soon, but I had lost all right to have any say as to when not an hour since, up on the roof of the Paris Opera. But privacy -- there I did have some control. If I stayed, Meg would pop in to gossip, or la Sorelli to give me further advice, or Jeanne to ask for advice -- my dressing room was small and out of the way, but it did not give me any certainty of being alone, not any more. So. Back home to Mme. Valerius, to a place where no one would pester me._

* * *

"The Comte de Chagny wishes to speak with me," Christine repeated. The words sounded no more comprehensible the second time.

"So his note said," Mama Valerius agreed, with far more cheerfulness than Christine thought the event warranted. "About a 'very important matter.' I beg your pardon for opening it, but when the footman came, I thought…"

"No. No, it's…thank you." Christine swallowed, and held out her hand for the note.

It was written on monogrammed paper, in a firm hand not unlike Raoul's -- he had not entrusted this to his secretary, then. It said little more than Mama Valerius had already told her, however. What more did it need, after all? She knew perfectly well what, or rather who, the 'very important matter' was, and between Sorelli's word and her own observation, she had an excellent idea what he wanted to say to her. A secret engagement, she thought desperately. A sop to Raoul's pride, something to keep him happy and out of Erik's way for three weeks. A last chance to enjoy the normal pleasures that a girl was supposed to have, before turning away and giving herself completely and utterly to her Angel who was no angel, and to the music. No one was supposed to be hurt. No one was supposed to know.

But they did, and now she must say something to Phillipe de Chagny. She sat at her tiny desk, dipped her pen, and stared at the blank piece of paper in front of her.

Dear. M. le Comte de Chagny, do consider, despite your rank, your brother is a grown man and should be allowed to do as he wishes-- No.

Dear sir, I assure you, I never had any intentions upon the vicomte-- Oh, indeed.

Dear Phillipe, do you believe in the Phantom of the Opera? For pity's sake, this was getting her nowhere. The entire situation was ridiculous.

She put her pen back into the inkwell, rose to her feet, and paced over to her window. Twilight in the streets of Paris. A lamplighter on his ladder, down at the end of the street, rose on tiptoe and set flame to wick. Christine watched him for a few moments, until she realized she had begun the careful, steady breaths Erik had taught her.

Dear monsieur, within a day's time, one way or another, you will not need worry about Christine Daae again.

Christine sighed, returned to the table, and wrote a short, stiff note to Phillipe de Chagny, declining the appointment.

* * *

_I did not sing that night -- not for the sake of avoiding Erik, merely because it was one of the theater's weekly 'dark' nights. When I returned to the Opera the next afternoon, I remained wrapped in the detached calm that had descended on me the previous day. I have no notion how I looked, though I can make a guess -- Mme. Valerius clucked her tongue and pressed tea on me before she would allow me to go, and I heard little Cecile Jammes telling Meg that I must have forgotten to touch the iron horseshoe coming in, for truly I seemed bewitched. The Persian found me backstage after warm-ups, and looked into my eyes for a very long moment, as if he thought to read my heart. No one spoke to me. No one asked me what was wrong. The quiet within remained untouched._

_The strains of the overture woke me at last. I remembered, all too well, the prickling sensation of being watched that had accompanied my last performance. Erik would be watching again: of that I had no doubt. I took a deep breath, and wrapped myself in the notes and the rituals of singing. Stand tall, breathe so, let the music come from the bottom of your lungs and the depths of your heart. I gave way to it, wanting to lose myself in the music. If the opera ended, and nothing happened, then the storm had somehow passed me by -- I was superstitiously certain of this. But I would not allow myself to think on it. The music -- only the music was important._

_Holy angel, in heaven blessed --_

_--up, up, soaring into the heavens myself --_

_My spirit longs with thee to rest!_

_And there is a breathless pause before Faust calls, Marguerite!_

_In that moment, the lights went out, and the ground vanished from under me. I had time to think, ah, a trapdoor, and then how did I come to be standing on a trapdoor? before I landed, badly, all my breath knocked out of me. Then a death-cold hand closed around my wrist and pulled me to my feet, and I knew the storm had broken at last._

* * *

The hand released her the moment she'd regained her feet, leaving her to stand alone in the dark. She could hear nothing above her; no outcry, no sign she'd vanished from the stage, no sign she'd been missed at all. Perhaps she hadn't fallen at all -- but no, her breath still hitched in her throat, and her knees felt scraped raw.

"Erik?" she whispered.

For answer, the cold hand closed around her right wrist again and pulled. She stumbled and caught herself before she could fall again. The hand tugged again sharply, and she followed its pull, stepping as carefully as she might. It was Erik. It could be no one else. But why so silent?

Because he knows. Because he saw. Why else, you fool? She bit her tongue, and willed herself not to shiver.

Down, down, down stairs and steep passageways, still wrapped in darkness. Had Erik turned off every light in the Opera? Down, down, step after stumbling step, down toward the lake beneath the lowest cellars: Christine could already smell the rank mustiness of water too long unmoving. The hand left her wrist at last, and came to press against her waist, guiding her forward into -- ah. Naturally. Into the boat. She sank to her knees, feeling the boat rock beneath her as her companion climbed in. Down here, the distant fires of the furnaces provided a little light, enough for her to see the pale, stocky pillars that supported the entire Opera Garnier, rising out of the water. She watched them pass.

The last of the pillars vanished behind her, the sound of water against the boat ceased, and the boat rocked violently again. They had reached the far side of the lake. She reached out a hand without looking: his cold hand seized it again, and pulled her to her feet, then out onto the dock, far less gently than the first time she had trod this path. Along the dock, to the door that opened before them…Christine wondered if the parlor would be full of flowers once more, as if she'd somehow erased the past weeks. Despite Erik's insistent hand on her wrist, she slowed.

The door swung open in front of her, and she stopped short, unable to force herself forward those two steps more. Erik's hand vanished from her wrist, but he did not step around her. Instead, she felt his arm come around her waist, like a loose embrace, and the press of his body against her, unexpectedly warm. His hand dropped to encircle her wrist again, loosely, then traced its way up her bare arm, before his voice murmured in her ear. "Will you wait for me, Christine?"

"Yes," she whispered, before she could think better of it.

"Good." She could feel his breath against her neck, now, as if he were about to kiss her, warm and intimate -- his hand was so cold against her arm, how could anything about him be warm like this… Then he abruptly stepped away from her, the only breath against her a chill breeze from nowhere. "I must visit my banker. No tricks, my dear, or I shall tie you up when I return."

His voice faded as he spoke. She stood there, trembling and bewildered, and held her breath -- but all she heard was the sound of oars, receding. He was leaving. He was leaving. She whirled around, but boat and man both had vanished into the uncertain shadows on the lake. She opened her mouth to scream after him, but shut it instead, turned on her heel, and went inside.

* * *

_My first business was to wash and change (Erik had, prior to my first visit, by methods into which I had never dared inquire, procured several dresses fit to my measurements). I did not know when to expect Erik's return, and I did not wish to be wearing Marguerite's prison tatters when next I faced him._

_I cannot say what I expected from that confrontation. That I would have to explain what he had overheard on the rooftop, certainly, and why I no longer wore his ring. But I believed -- I hoped -- that this conversation, awkward and angry as it must be, would be the entirety of it._

_I knew better. I cannot claim I did not. But I hoped._

* * *

She did not hear him return, though she had strained her ears long enough waiting for the sound of the boat bumping into the dock and footsteps approaching the door. Instead, as she sat staring down at a recent newspaper she'd found upon the table in the parlor, she felt the shivery, skin-prickling awareness of being watched. She closed her eyes, and tried to remember her breathing. "Erik?"

A soft, unnerving chuckle that seemed to come from the wall behind her. "No one else would come here without an invitation, mademoiselle. Although there are those…" He broke off, and chuckled again.

"Like Joseph Buquet." Christine glanced up cautiously. Where was Erik? Nowhere in her line of sight, at least. Surely he would not have built hidden places into his very apartment, would he?

"Among others." The brush of cool fingers against Christine's cheek made her jump, and she looked up full into Erik's face. He wore the mask, elegant and invisible, his eyes hardly more than a golden gleam in shadow. "You've a taste for being watched, haven't you?"

"Among -- Erik, what are you talking about?" He'd said that his house was surrounded by 'particular protections' --

"I watched you for months before I spoke," he continued, as if he hadn't heard her. His fingertips lingered against her skin, tracing the line of her cheekbone down along her chin. "So innocent. So beautiful."

"Erik, if someone else is trapped--"

"You do not flinch from my hand any more." As if to demonstrate this, his hand cupped her face, then glided down her neck to linger by her collarbone. "You'll grow used to me, my love. You blushed when I watched you. You let me see--"

"Erik, is someone else coming?" Anything to change the subject. Her face felt hot -- Mary mother of saints, surely even Erik's anger would be easier to bear than this peculiar possessive whisper. She didn't want to remember what she'd done six months ago, before she knew who watched her so intently.

Erik's hand tightened on her shoulder. "Of course," he said flatly. "At least I expect so -- I confess, I did not stop and give your lover directions myself, but my old friend will be more than willing to show him the way."

Old friend? Oh . Of course. "The Persian knows the way here?"

Erik chuckled again. The sound had not become less goblin-like or unnerving with repetition. "He knows what I have chosen for him to know." He let go of her shoulder abruptly, and knelt down beside her, meeting her eyes with that golden gaze like hellfire. "I don't expect them for a few hours yet -- the police must be called in, and your lover must despair of them first before he is likely to trust anyone else. You have time to compose your maidenly blushes."

"Raoul de Chagny is not my lover," Christine said desperately.

Erik did not answer, only took her left hand in his, and produced from his waistcoat pocket a familiar ring, which he held out to her -- in offering, in accusation, it was impossible to tell which. Her breath strangled in her throat, and she stared down at it until he closed his hand on it and rose to his feet again.

"You lost your ring," he said from somewhere overhead. "You should take greater care, Christine."

"Erik--"

"Come, my dear." Hand on her shoulders, demanding rather than coaxing her to her feet. "You must make your choice."

* * *

_It would have been easier if he had begun by shouting at me, I think, though I cannot say easier in what sense. Easier to shout back defiance, perhaps, or easier to turn my back on him. 'How dare you kidnap me! Am I to be your prey instead of your wife? Let me go!' It would not have resolved the problem of Raoul -- Erik had a better notion of Raoul's mind than I would have expected possible, after all my efforts to keep them from ever meeting -- but it would have given me firm ground to stand upon, the Maiden in Durance Vile._

_Instead, he left me shivering from unwilling memories, and wooed me with arrogant, terrifying seduction. He had gambled all upon this night, after all. I could not expect him to grant me even a moment to breathe, still less to think._

* * *

"Not like this," Christine whispered, forcing the words out one by one.

"Would you have preferred some other way?" Erik's voice vibrated now like a snapped violin string. He knelt down beside her chair without touching her. "I would have wooed you, Christine, courted you like any other man -- I love you, and you go up to the rooftop of my Opera house with that damned pup of a Vicomte--" His voice leapt up to a mocking falsetto, "'oh, he cannot hear us there!'," then back down to its normal register, rough as she had only heard it once, "but I, I hear everything in my Opera, even the damned lying words of the woman I love!"

"I did not lie!"

"Did you not?" He rose to his feet and leaned over her, hands braced upon the arms of the chair. Christine tightened her hands in her lap and did not flinch back. "When Rahim told you I had killed, and would kill again, you answered him look for look and word for word. And yet you told your boy that you feared me every moment you were in my company, called me a murderer and a monster--"

"You yourself confessed to the death of Joseph Buquet!"

"I kill when I must, mademoiselle." How calm he sounded, Christine thought dazedly, as if he spoke of taking a daily constitutional stroll upon the Bois. "If you wanted to know such things, you had only to ask."

"Ask?" For a wild moment, Christine envisioned such a conversation. How many have you killed? Monsieur le Persian insists you killed for pleasure, once upon a time--

"Only love me," Erik said, so close that she could feel his breath against her forehead, and could not see his face at all, mask or no, "and you shall save me. I shall submit myself entirely to your governance, and we shall live like such ordinary people, Christine, like any other husband and wife --"

"This is mockery," Christine breathed. Ordinary people? He wanted to live like ordinary people? Erik knew far better even than she did that his face would prevent any sort of acceptance by society, and the mask would attract as much attention as it deflected. But even if he somehow found a way to mask himself such that no questions would be asked -- could he ever live an 'ordinary' life?

Don't be a fool, Christine. He was not seeking your opinion on the matter, but offering… Offering what? In addition to his hand in marriage. Dear God, why had she ever thought matters would be simpler if only her Angel had a human form?

"Mockery?" She could hear the fury she'd expected, now, like an undertone beneath his words, still faint. He still leaned over her. "Is it so impossible that I should want to live like any other man? Did you think I desired this? Did you believe I chose to live alone, without hope, without love?"

He paused, as if expecting an answer, but Christine could think of none, beyond no, of course not, which answered very little. She remained silent, and tried not to tremble -- he was too close, he would feel it.

"I ask only for a 'yes', Christine." The words came whispered into her ear, almost a caress. "You no longer flinch away from me. You no longer fear the monster at your feet."

"Erik--"

"I know why you hesitate." He stood up, at last, no longer so close that her breath stifled in her throat. "Your handsome Vicomte has turned your head, and I…" A moment's hesitation, and he stepped away from her, just a little. "My own mother fled from me." He spoke quietly, as if telling her the time of day. "I wore a mask before any other clothing."

"Erik --" What could she say? He himself had just claimed she did not flinch, and then told her this. "She was wrong, you are not a monster --"

"I did not tell you to seek your pity, mademoiselle." His eyes seemed to glitter behind his mask, and for a moment the iron anger had returned to his voice, distant thunder. Then it vanished again, as he offered her his hand -- no hesitation now. "Here, I shall spare your maidenly blushes and make your choice simple. You need not even say yes."

Or 'no'. Although since she could hardly find the breath to so much as speak to him, she could not imagine where she would find the courage to refuse him. She bit her tongue, hard, and accepted his hand. He led her over to…dear God. The door to her own room. Her heart stilled in her breast for an aching moment, then leapt into double-time. He would -- he meant to --

But he did not even glance at the bed in the center of the room. Instead, he led her over to the mantelpiece she had hardly noticed, where two carved wooden boxes sat on either side of the center like a pair of rather dull ornaments. These boxes he unlocked with a small key, produced from who knew where -- the air, perhaps -- and said, "Look inside, Christine, and tell me what you see."

She obediently rose up on her toes and peered in. Each box appeared to contain a small statue, far better ornament than the wooden boxes, in her opinion: a bronze grasshopper on the left, a bronze scorpion on the right. "Two statues of bronze," she said.

"The statues turn upon their bases -- no, don't test them, you must trust me in this. If you turn the scorpion, then I shall know your answer is yes."

Christine stared down at the statues. "And the grasshopper?" she ventured, when Erik said nothing for too long a space.

Erik chuckled, that darkling, sinister little chuckle. "Means no," was all he said.

A bell rang in the next room, so sudden in the quiet that Christine jumped. Erik merely tilted his head, then bowed to Christine. "Pardon me, mademoiselle," he said ironically. "I must go greet our visitors."

* * *

_And still he did not shout, and still he did not scream, and still he behaved as if I were an innocent girl who merely hesitated because of her maidenly blushes._

_I did blush. He spoke to me with all the intimate frankness of an acknowledged and accepted lover, or of my long-ago dream at Perros-Guirec. But I did not hesitate out of innocence, or from a lingering desire for Raoul, despite my performance on the rooftop. I hesitated because I knew that Erik could consider my choice, when it came, to be binding. And he would not be satisfied with fine words and sweet smiles alone, the half-measures I had given Raoul._

_I have given you my soul, I had once said to the Angel of Music. Erik would be satisfied with nothing less. And by the time the deadline he had set for my decision -- eleven o'clock the following evening -- approached, I was exhausted from resisting him._

* * *

"Why did you bring Raoul into this?"

"Why did I bring the vicomte into this?" Erik's voice lingered cuttingly on the words: she did not dare turn to see any physical reaction. "I was not the one who hesitated, and did not turn him away when given the opportunity, more than once, nor the one who gave him her hand in betrothal, nor the one who betrayed the man who loved her--"

"I was not the one who lured an innocent man down to his death!" She folded her arms across her chest, keeping her eyes fixed on the polished surface of the table rather than allowing them to drift to the door, toward where she had heard those desperate, demanding voices, in the torture room just beyond her own bedroom. Erik's dark humor at work. "Let him go. He has done nothing to you -- the fault is mine, not his. Let him go."

"He distracts you," Erik said gently, as if reasoning with a child. He stood on the far side of the table: she could see him out of the corner of her eye now. "I will not have you distracted."

"And so you hold him hostage instead!" She turned, and caught herself as she reached out for his sleeve, his hand, any thing to make him look at her with those all-seeing eyes. She allowed her hand to fall to her side again, and drew in a shuddering breath, seeking to contain the emotion that seethed in her breast. "Am I to believe that you shall let him go if I choose…if I agree to marry you?"

"Perhaps. You do not need two husbands."

How often must she say this, or something like it? "I have not married Raoul de Chagny --"

"No, not yet." The gentleness had fallen from his voice, leaving something colder than winter, cold as the Angel at His most distant and furious. He still did not look at her. "Did you think I did not know of your 'secret engagement'?"

He had known. Of course he had known, oh, why had she ever thought discretion -- "How long did you overlisten our conversation?"

"Oh, long enough, mademoiselle. Quite illuminating -- I had not realized that you spent your time here in captivity, imprisoned by a monster rather than a man!" Now, at last, he swung around to face her. His golden eyes were dimmed, and Christine wondered painfully if he wept. "You look surprised," he said.

"Not surprised." For a miracle, her own voice held steady, and without the dreaded glow of anger in his eyes, she dared look at him directly. "I thought you an honorable man -- yes, despite all the proofs I have had otherwise, despite the way you have treated me, I believed you when you told me I was safe, I and those I took under my care."

Erik stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. "Nor did I lay a hand on you or your boy of a suitor," he said in that same chill, distant, stinging voice. "But mark the limits of my promise." He reached out and seized her right wrist, holding her hand up before her eyes. "You do not wear my ring, dear Christine."

She would not struggle, no matter how cruelly tight he held her. She must not struggle, no matter how much she burned with the rising desire to do so. "Then what shall I say? If I accept you, then by your own words, you shall kill a man for no worse fault than loving me and not sharing your twisted face." Erik did not so much as flinch from the accusation, only watched her, hand unyielding on her wrist. "If I do not, then what? Raoul dies, and the Persian with him, and I suffer your lusts?"

A moment's pause, then Erik said, "No. You shall not suffer anything." He sounded as if he were smiling, as if at some hideous joke known only to himself. He released her, however, long enough to take his watch out and look at the time, then reach up and remove his mask, without explanation, allowing it to fall carelessly to the floor. As she stared at him, he offered her his arm. "Come, my dear. It's nearly eleven. Let us begin the final act."

She drew in a long, trembling breath, then let it out. She had known this would come -- the point when Erik would lose patience, when she must choose. "Now?" Was it truly almost eleven? She hadn't slept since Erik brought her down here. "In front of you?"

Erik stopped in the doorway, and turned to face her once more. "Then tell me now." For the first time, he sounded not cold or calm or even seductive, only tired. He had not slept either, she remembered. Both of them were surely near the end of themselves by now. "Tell me the truth. Either say you shall marry me, and give yourself wholly to my keeping, as I shall give myself to you -- or say no, and turn the grasshopper."

"The grasshopper," Christine repeated. "Erik, what is this about the grasshopper?"

"It controls an electric current. There is beneath our feet several tons of gunpowder -- I never bothered to measure how much. Turn the grasshopper, Christine, and we shall all be blown to bits, and all the Opera with us."

Oh. Oh. She had only thought she had gone beyond surprise: now she stood stock-still until Erik pulled at her arm once more and drew her the last steps into the room. There he let her go, and said, "Christine. I await your choice."

"Erik!" This voice was muffled, and only barely familiar. "Erik, are you there?"

"I must ask you to be quiet, daroga," Erik said, never taking his eyes from Christine. "Mademoiselle Daae had not yet spoken."

"Christine? Christine!" Raoul's voice, hoarse and painful to hear now. "Christine, don't do it, please, don't sacrifice yourself--"

Erik, ignoring the shouts from the torture room, withdrew his watch from his pocket once more and checked it. "It is eleven, mademoiselle. No answer?"

No. Yes. Her stubborn limbs would not move, her voice seemed clenched in her throat. He knew what answer she would give, what answer she must give, why did he torture her so?

But Erik had paused, it seemed, only for effect. "Then it shall be the grasshopper," he said, and began to cross the room.

The muffled shouts reached a new pitch, but to Christine's ears they might as well have been only echoes. "Erik!" She was across the room without knowing how she got there, her hand on his wrist this time. He obediently stopped. Another deep breath, then she let go of his wrist and rose up on her toes and opened the right-hand box and, with startling ease, turned the scorpion.

The shouting stopped. She distantly hoped she had not killed them after all. She could not afford to look: her entire self must focus on Erik. "Never do that again," she said, the words tumbling out. "They are not to blame."

He had not moved since she seized his wrist, only the flicker of his eyes betraying the depth of the feelings that wracked him. "Christine…"

"Erik." The scorpion was practice. This was the moment of choice. "Listen to me."

"You love me?" His voice cracked, not mocking but aching hope, more painful than any torture to hear.

Yes. Perhaps. No -- he'd learned from her own lips not to trust her words. Instead, Christine boldly dipped her fingers into his waistcoat pocket and drew out the ring, then slid it onto the third finger of her left hand. You may now… She must not give him time to think -- she must not give herself time to think. She reached up and drew his head down to hers.

It was not like kissing Raoul had been. Erik hesitated, lips still and cool against hers -- and then his hands came to rest on her waist, and his lips opened under hers. He kissed with all his heart, passionate and uncertain all at once, as if the kiss gave him as much pain as pleasure. She broke the kiss after a long, long moment, and looked up at him. Erik looked back at her gravely. One hand came up to brush over her cheek, and she realized distantly that she was weeping. So was he.

"I've made my choice," she whispered. "Now you must do the same."

"Yes. I know." But Erik did not move away. He stood there, looking down into her eyes for a long, long time.


	12. Concerning ever after

EPILOGUE

(concerning the nature of ever-after)

_At this juncture, according to M. Leroux (who supposedly had it from the Persian himself), the Phantom was overcome with remorse for his actions, released Raoul and myself, and permitted us to wed. He himself died a few weeks later, presumably of the usual sort of disease that permits romantic heroes, even such a twisted one as he, to die in a timely and dramatic manner. Raoul and I vanished into the mists, and everyone lived happily ever after, except perhaps the managers who had now lost a second diva in as many months and must begin the search all over again._

_This account contains just enough truth to render the rest ludicrous. Erik released Raoul and the Persian from the torture chamber, of course: he had promised me, and so it was done. Nor, after the spectacular method of my disappearance, could I remain in the house beyond the lake, no matter what choices I had made: sooner or later the search for me would extend too far for even Erik to remain completely concealed, to say nothing of what either Raoul or the Persian might say when they returned._

"Oh, no." Christine snatched the pen away from her paper, but too late; half her sentence had been swallowed in a blot. With a grimace, she replaced the pen in its holder, crumpled up the paper, and threw it at the door.

Her husband narrowly dodged it as he entered. He glanced down at the paper, then strolled around to peer over her shoulder. "I take it that your project progresses ill today."

"Well enough, except that my pen leaks," she said, leaning back into the familiar warmth of her husband's body. "I do not look forward to what I must write next, I confess. I could hardly find the words to describe the events before the final choice. To explain what came afterwards…"

Her husband thought for a moment, hand absently stroking her hair. "I let you go," he said at last. "You returned to me the following day. The Vicomte spluttered off to the North Pole, Rahim apologized, you gave your notice, and we came north ourselves to here." His other hand waved casually toward the window. "What further explanation do they deserve?"

"You make it sound so simple," Christine protested, but she couldn't keep from laughing as she said it.

"Miracles are." Erik bent and kissed the top of her head.

No miracle, Christine thought. The past years had not always been easy - when two artistic temperaments set up house together, there would always be conflict, even if one of them did not have Erik's temper, and the press of secrets to keep. But then, they'd abandoned childhood stories in the depths of the Opera House. Speaking of which - "How is Marguerite?"

"Gone to visit friends. I do not expect her until supper." She could hear the smile in Erik's voice. Cool fingers drew the hair back from her neck, and Christine closed her eyes as Erik pressed one tantalizing kiss, then another, just beneath her ear.

"Erik." It came out as a moan.

"Did you wish something of me, my love?"

She laughed again, unable to stop herself, and turned in her seat, holding out her hands to her husband. "Bed," she said throatily, and delighted in the low laugh that answered her. Pen and paper would wait. This would not.

* * *

_M. Leroux says the Opera Ghost is dead, a skeleton with a golden ring upon its finger. Those who knew him are dead as well, or vanished - and that, I suppose, is truth enough for the common crowd._

_For the rest…perhaps someday my daughter, or her children, will return to more civilized lands, and Paris will once more fall at the feet of one who has heard the Angel of Music. I am content with what I have. The Opera Ghost lives, and I with him._

_…et s'il ne mouraient, alors vivent-ils toujours._

-fin-

* * *

A FINAL NOTE, JUST BEFORE REHEARSAL STARTS - I MEAN, THE END OF IT ALL: 

I began writing Christine's Tale in 1992, as a way to deal with my fascination with all things Phantom of the Opera. I listened to the OLC recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical over and over again. _Why_ didn't it just end after 'Music of the Night'? Why didn't Christine have enough spirit, enough backbone, enough _brains_, to choose her Angel?

...what if she did?

I finished it in 1999, a year after I graduated from college, as much out of a sense of obligation as out of love for the story. I had drifted away from Phantom, burned out and disillusioned by the fandom, and gone on to other fandoms and other characters. But Christine deserved some kind of closure, even if no one else would ever see it.

Cut to: 2004. Rumors of the upcoming film are flying, even more thickly than when I left the fandom, and I listened with growing uneasiness. What were they doing with the music? Why did the Phantom look like he belonged on the cover of GQ? What was this about a swordfight? Finally, my significant other (also a Phantom fan of old) poked me. _Post it_, she said. _If you want an alternate vision out there, then post CHRISTINE'S TALE._

So I began revisions. And here we are.

Thank you to all of you for sticking with me through this. I've read every comment, even if I didn't respond: some made me grin, some made me think, and some got shared with the aforementioned significant other because they deserved to be shared. Glad you enjoyed it (for the most part), and I'll see you around!


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